


until the sun make the hills its grave

by a_simple_space_nerd



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Clarke deserves better I love my daughter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt Clarke, Hurt No Comfort, Minor Bellamy Blake/Echo, Post-Season/Series 05, Sad with a Happy Ending, Season/Series 06 Speculation, Sickfic, but that's the show's whole thing, like.. kind of, more "hopeful" than "happy", my writing gets steadily worse haha, new planet!!, pleAse validate me, update: we got to the comfort part of the "hurt no comfort" tag, we'll get there though!!!, what if night blood can be something more than politics?, what if radiation sickness isn't just a bad guy problem?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_simple_space_nerd/pseuds/a_simple_space_nerd
Summary: Clarke feels like she’s underwater, breathing in glass. The air feels syrupy, but raw against her throat, and she has to squint if she looks at the sky for too long. The yellow-blue plants of this planet burn her skin if she touches them for too long. It’s hard to get up after she’s been sitting down for more than a few minutes, and it feels like something is pressing down on her shoulders every time she takes a breath.It didn’t take long for Clarke to realise that something was wrong. No one else did, but she doesn’t expect them to because what's wrong isn't the planet, it's her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is! a mess!!
> 
> psa: I haven't watched the 100 past season 3,, yikes @ myself,, is anything is ooc that's why!!
> 
> also: this is the first part, but I am planning to continue with this. it's been tricky finding inspo for this between school and writers block, so please be patient, I am trying :)

Clarke feels like she’s underwater, breathing in glass. The air feels syrupy, but raw against her throat, and she has to squint if she looks at the sky for too long.

The yellow-blue plants burn her skin if she touches them for too long. It’s hard to get up after she’s been sitting down for more than a few minutes, and it feels like something is pressing down on her shoulders every time she takes a breath.

But it’s okay. She’s breathing, she’s on a living planet, Madi is as safe as she can be in this new world, and most of Earth’s survivors are still alive. (Whether they’re okay has always been another matter altogether.) Raven sends them down in groups of thirty, members of Eligius and Wonkru together, assigning them jobs of scouting and measuring, and they report back to her every night with a new batch of statistics. They’re alive and they’re building a life, and Clarke just has to live long enough for the others to see it too.

* * *

It didn’t take long for Clarke to realise that something was wrong. No one else did, but she doesn’t expect them to, because what’s wrong isn’t the planet, it’s _her_. Around her, the rest of civilization demonstrated mixed reactions to the new planet. Some members of the landing party grinned and nudged each other, staring at the sky in wonder, while others grip their weapons and watched the trees with familiar wariness.

The first few days passed in a blur of new discoveries and familiar sights, filled with the laughter of people tasting freedom and raised voices of people unaccustomed to silence. Their mission on the planet is simple: scope out the territory, check for life, jot down observations to report back to the ship in space. Survive, hopefully.

Slowly, the group discoveries camaraderie and begin to form very tentative friendships, grievances set aside in the wake of such a monumental discovery. On this planet, wonkru and eligius can coexist, at least for now. Clarke doesn’t throw herself into the work like some of the others, but she accepts each of the tasks assigned to her without a word. And there are dozens of tasks: collect samples, set up tents, search the forests, go on scouting missions, attempt to build fires.

The days continue to pass. As the suns set, Clarke finds herself sitting often on the still-open door to the ship, her legs dangling. People bustle around her, calling out to each other, but Clarke can’t find the energy to join them. She knows something’s wrong, she just can’t find it in herself to really care.

By the end of the fifth day, Clarke’s favourite part of the day is during late evening, when she can manage to slip away from the group. Bellamy told the others not to leave the group without a minimum of two other people, so either Clarke’s better at sneaking than she thought, or he just doesn’t care. He’s been avoiding her. Clarke doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want to talk to him either. She prefers the silence, now, and the way she’s able to relax away from camp, when she’s perched in the trees or on a hillside and watch the shining golden stars. She wishes Madi were here but that thought hurts like nothing else. (Madi can’t be here. Madi isn’t _Madi_. Nothing will ever be that simple again.)

* * *

Clarke is waiting outside the radio tent, hovering awkwardly. Bellamy and Echo are reporting on their scouting team’s findings, (a lake that shines pink and trees that reach the clouds,) and Clarke doesn’t mean to eavesdrop but it’s hard not to be attuned to even the slightest of sounds after six years of relative silence.

“It seems too good to be true,” Raven sighs, her voice a mix of wistful and wary. Clarke wants to say that it _is_ too good to be true, that something about this planet feels wrong down to her bones, but after everything that’s happened Raven deserves this. Besides, Clarke could never tell her any of that because Raven isn’t talking to her. Not more than she has to, at least; not more than _anything to report_ and _okay_. It’s alright, of course Clarke understands, she’s not bitter about it. (Her heart feels like an open wound and her chest grows tighter with grief every day but it’s really, really okay.)

Bellamy comes out of the tent a few minutes later, and when he catches sight of her his brow furrows. “What are you doing here?” There’s no warmth in his voice, and she’s well accustomed to the lilt of suspicion. It still stings, coming from him. 

“Shaw asked me to bring him some supplies,” Clarke answers, thrown and trying desperately not to show it. She can hear the hesitation in her voice, the uncertainty, and she wishes longingly for a time when things were different between them. She’d almost forgotten how small guilt makes her feel. 

“Right,” Bellamy says slowly, voice gruff, and Clarke brushes past him into the tent when he steps slightly to one side. _I can deal with him hating me,_ Clarke thinks to herself while Shaw sorts through the soil samples, _I’ve done it before._ But it’s different this time, because Bellamy isn’t that boy from the dropship anymore, (not that she knows who the hell he is now anyway,) and it’s not as simple as hate anymore. It’s suspicion, and it’s betrayal and unease.

They’re two open wounds, and every time they see each other the injury grows.

* * *

Clarke busies herself with the jobs she’s been assigned, teaching the Eligius crew how to hold a spear and reminding Wonkru members which soil patches will sink under too much pressure. This is a different planet, not the one she spent six years learning about, so Clarke is really just grateful that she at least has some use. She doesn’t know which plants here will weaken fevers and which cause them, she doesn’t know what bark can sustain hungry stomachs, but she can still slip through the woods on silent feet and still set traps with an ease that the others have forgotten or never learned.

Sometimes she’s assigned to scouting missions, where she’ll keep her mouth shut for most of the time and stick to the far right of the group. Other times she’ll manage to head off by herself, slipping away into the shrubbery and walking until the only sound she can hear is her own breathing and the rustle of leaves. It’s easier to breathe in the silence. It’s easier to imagine she’s back on earth, alone with the soil and the sun, and Madi will come bursting through the trees any moment with a smile on her face.

“I don’t know why you sent me here,” Clarke murmurs to the radio. “There’s nothing for me to show or teach. I’m just as new on this planet as anyone else.”

“I doubt that,” replies Diyoza, “but if you really think there’s nothing for you to teach, you’d better learn quickly.” Clarke blinks at the radio, something in her throat constricting, and she has to swallow a humourless laugh. She didn’t even want to go down to the planet, but it had been Diyoza’s one condition. Clarke didn’t really get a choice, but that doesn’t surprise her anymore.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “I guess I do.” These people don’t need a guide to Earth anymore, and no sane person would let Wanheda stitch their skin together. Clarke’s days as a leader ended six (plus a hundred) years ago, and her days as a guide never even arrived. If she doesn’t want to fade into obsolescence or become a liability, she needs to find a purpose. She needs to stay useful, before any of the dozen people who still have energy to want her dead decide she’s outlived her relevance.

She’s aware of this. (Obsolescence seems more appealing than anything else Clarke can think of, and it’s getting harder to stomp down the desire to disappear into the woods and never remerge. It’s infinitely more appealing to watch herself wither from a distance than it is to put energy into adapting into someone new yet again.)

* * *

Some members of the ground team are braver than others, or simply more curious, so Clarke isn’t entirely left to her own devices. Wonkru don’t like to talk to her (fear or is it hatred?) and Eligius don’t relish interacting with her, but there are a rare few who shoulder past the prejudice and pride.

There’s a girl with freckles who likes to chatter about how different this world is to the one she left centuries ago, and there’s a teenage boy with Azgeda scars who trails her for hours and smiles when she shows him where to find hidden flowers. There’s a woman from Wonkru who brings items for Clarke to sketch, and there are two Eligius crew members who talk at her as though she’s responding.

They are the most open with her, those five and occasionally a few others, and Clarke wonders why they’re interested in her (when there’s a whole new planet before them, and she is nothing but an ancient relic of a time and place long gone,) but remembers the days when Wanheda painted a target on her back and decides she’d rather not know.

Bellamy and Echo, the only two people of this planet that Clarke knew from before, stay far away from her. They’re professional, they’re busy, they’re removed. Clarke doesn’t mind. She understands and she can cope.

And yet: it takes the wind from her lungs to realise that on this planet, she and Bellamy are the only two members of what used to be Skaikru. (Funny, that—she always thought she’d be by his side. Funny, how things change.)

* * *

“They say you are _Heda’s_ mother,” says the Azgeda boy, watching her closely.

On her knees with her hands full of moss, Clarke pauses. She pulls her fingers from the dirt and wipes her forehead with the back of her palm. He is standing, guarded against nothing but wind, and Clarke wishes she’d managed to slip away undetected.

“I’m not,” she says after the silence grows roots. “But for a while I was all she had.”

Madi is asleep on the ship. Clarke had begged for it, had begged for nothing else. ( _Let her sleep for now,_ she’d pleaded _, she is too young to decide on the fate of the human race. She will already have to make those decisions when we land. Please, for now just let her sleep_.) Madi is a sky away, and Clarke’s heart is frozen with her.

Madi no longer needs her, has twelve guardians in her head who drive her away from Clarke with every whispered word. Clarke doesn’t need to see how Madi will pull away from her when she wakes up, she already knows it will happen. Everyone else may have forgotten, but Clarke once had those voices in her head too. Some things are inevitable.

“And now you are not?” Clarke had almost forgotten about the Azgeda boy. She doesn’t know his name, and she wonders if it matters to him. Her fingers, she notices, are blistering slightly.

“Now she is _Heda_ ,” Clarke answers instead. All that a _Heda_ needs is a Flamekeeper, and Clarke would not return to that life even if Madi asked her to, and Clarke is well aware that she won’t.

“Oh,” says the Azgeda, because he is not young enough to have forgotten the time before Wonkru. There are scars on his cheeks which will not let him. “I’m… sorry, I guess.”

Clarke shrugs and lets her hair fall into a curtain around her face when she buries her hands back into the red moss. Madi has been gone from her side for two weeks. It is the first time they’ve been separated in six years, and Clarke can feel herself withering away with every passing day.

* * *

This planet is trying to kill her. The longer she stays on it, the more convinced she becomes by it. Her eyes water and her head pounds, and Clarke cringes away from the sounds of rejoicing youth as they grow more comfortable in embracing their new planet. Atiyo, the Azgeda youth, frowns at her but Clarke waves him off, hating the way he reminds her of who Finn once was and who Jasper could have been, had they weathered earth’s storms differently.

No one else seems to feel what she does, but maybe they’re just better at ignoring it. Maybe Clarke has grown soft, from her years of peace and suffocating silence. (There are hurricanes which say differently. There are _pauna_ who would disagree.) Either way, Clarke straightens her shoulders as much as she can, bites her tongue to keep from groaning when she moves too suddenly, and quirks her lips in a barely-there smile when the clumsy pair from the Eligius crew trip and stumble over roots. She has survived far worse. Of all the ways to go, this is more a blessing than a curse. (She tries not to think about Madi, but it doesn’t work. Madi is all she can think about, always.)

Talking takes too much effort, these days. Mentally and physically. Her tongue feels clumsy in her mouth, and her heart feels heavy in her chest, so Clarke focusses on keeping her back firm while she tries not to shrink away from conversation too visibly. At first she hadn’t replied to the few people who’d engage in conversation with her simply because she didn’t see the point and couldn’t find the words, but by the time almost a month has passed and another drop team is on the ground, she just feels too empty and depleted to muster up any energy. Her muscles ache, and she gets headaches almost every day. She wakes from sleep more tired than when she lay down. Her scars ache worse than they have in years.

She might feel guiltier about her diminishing voice if it was needed in some way, but Clarke’s voice _isn’t_ needed here. Her hands, and occasionally her mind, but for the most part she is just the same as anyone else. Most of Wonkru avoid her (she still carries death, they whisper,) and most of Eligius is wary of her, (she is a danger and Diyoza should not have sent her, they mutter,) and Bellamy and Echo have not said a word to her in days.

Madi and Clarke used to do nothing but talk for hours, trading stories, switching languages. They would sing, too, as loudly as they wanted because there was no one left to care. Clarke knows the sound of Madi’s laughter better than she knows her mother’s voice.

* * *

There is a woman from Wonkru who brews tea in the early mornings and hands a cup to Clarke when she passes by. Clarke has tended to get up before the others to make a brief escape, but today she pauses and sits next to the Wonkru woman. (Clarke has, after all, nothing else to lose.) The woman is not much for conversation, but there are occasional whispered comments in Trig, in this time before the camp comes to life and the sound of the trees become drowned by voices and boots.

Bellamy and Echo walk by the campfire on the third day of the tea-brewing, hand in hand, and Bellamy doesn’t look at Clarke as they pass. Echo glances at Clarke sharply, still in conversation, and as she looks away Clarke finds her hand rising instinctively to her neck. It’s like she can still feel the ache of Echo’s attack on her skin, watching Madi and feeling helplessness like nothing she’d ever known. She isn’t sure if Bellamy chose not to see her or if he just didn’t notice, and she doesn’t really want to know.

“Fools,” the grounder woman says in Trig, into her tea, with a little eye roll. Clarke looks at her in surprise, hand falling back into her lap. “They will catch cold in weather like this, walking without jackets, and I thought we were not supposed to wander without a group? It’s as if they have forgotten the ways of the world.”

“They were in space for six years,” Clarke points out, and the woman tuts. 

“You should not simply forget the ways of your life,” she says with a look over her cup. “You do not forget what brought you to where you have gotten.” The woman looks away, face pointed to the sunset, and Clarke clutches her tea and fights down the urge to laugh or cry.

* * *

Murphy is coming down with the next team. Bellamy doesn’t tell her. She hears it through the youth, who chatter about the _skaikru from space_ and ask if she knows him.

“I know him,” Clarke answers, her step faltering. Bellamy didn’t tell her. Raven didn’t tell her. She knows she isn’t part of their family anymore, knows it as clearly as Bellamy told her, but the sting still takes a few days to subside.

God, she misses Madi. This planet makes her feel lonelier than six years with only a child for company ever did. The thought makes her feel guilty, but Clarke’s not usually one to hide from the truth.

The next time she walks past Bellamy, she pauses and reaches out a hand to touch his elbow. He pulls back like she’s burnt him. (Was it really less than a month ago that he pulled her into his side, that she laid her head on his chest?) The sight of Bellamy recoiling from her touch throws her so much that she almost forgets what she wanted to say, but seeing his shuttered face steels her resolve.

“I heard Murphy’s coming down with the next team,” she says, more of a statement than a question. _Why didn’t you tell me, how could you not tell me?_

“He is,” Bellamy replies. Clarke waits, trying not to let her hurt show on her face because it’s irrational to be hurt by something she already knew. “Sorry,” he adds a few seconds later, sounding anything but, “I, uh, guess I forgot to tell you.”

“Right,” Clarke answers faintly. When Bellamy hovers, so clearly uncomfortable, Clarke presses her chapped lips together _hard_ and shakes her head slightly, backing away. “Okay, thanks. I’m going to—scout.” She hurries away, feeling entirely disconnected from her body even as she feels her heartbeat stutter and throb.

* * *

“Wow, Griffin, you look like hell.”

Murphy’s voice is so incredulous that Clarke smiles. “Thanks,” she replies easily, “nice to see you too,” and Murphy frowns.

“I know I haven’t had the chance to chat to you for six years, but I’m pretty sure that rasp isn’t natural.”

Clarke’s smile slips, and she takes a breath, raising her eyebrows and looking at the ground. She doesn’t look up to see Murphy’s expression. “I’m fine,” she says lowly, folding her arms over each other. Not out of the desire for confrontation, but out of discomfort. She doesn’t want to be doing this. She’d rather be on one of those ridiculous scouting missions by herself. Maybe sketching something. She’s not used to talking to the people she used to know.

“Well you sure don’t look it,” Murphy announces, and Clarke sends him the most genuine smile she can muster.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, and maybe once she would have reached out to touch his arm or his shoulder. “I’m just tired.”

Murphy frowns, and Clarks swallows a sigh. _Careful, Murphy,_ she wants to say, _people might think you care._ (That’s something that the Clarke from six years ago would have said.) Clarke isn’t sure what Murphy might say back, but she knows it’s not her place to wonder. He isn’t her people anymore. None of them are.

“I’ve gotta go,” Clarke says, trying to shake off her thoughts before they burrow into her. “Take care of yourself.”

“We’re literally two of like eighty people on this planet,” Murphy calls after her as she heads away. Clarke smiles despite herself, raising a hand to wave at him without looking back.

 

It’s not until later that she realises that was their first meeting, that he’d already been on the ground for a few hours and their meeting was accidental. (She’d been waiting, with the others, but immediately after the landing she’d been instructed to show some of the new arrivals on how to hold equipment and set up tents. That was the role she’d been assigned in the morning. She’d been assigned the job that took her away from free time and reunions, but it’s not like Murphy had looked for her anyway.)

(Diyoza, Bellamy, and Miller as Octavia’s representative are the ones who assign jobs. Everyone but Bellamy is up in space, though Miller also came down with this latest shipment of human cargo. So. Clarke knows exactly who arranged her job rotations.)

* * *

“Hey,” Murphy says, materialising at her side, and Clare sighs. She lifts the firewood higher in her arms with a huff, and Murphy raises his eyebrows.

“Wow, what a way to greet an old friend,” he teases, mock offended, and Clarke winces. She tries to smile, but she isn’t sure what reaction he’s hoping for. She missed out on six years of learning his humour. She can appreciate that he’s trying to blaze forward anyway, but it’s uncomfortable.

“I realised you never told us about how you met Madi,” Murphy continues despite her lack of reply, and Clarke looks at him in vague surprise.

Before she can answer, one half of the talkative Eligius duo passes by and reaches an arm out to snag a few of Clarke’s timber pieces and sweep them into his own pile. He does so without a word, and Clarke rolls her eyes at his back, shaking her head.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” She turns back to Murphy, but he’s watching her with raised eyebrows, and she fights the flush rising in her cheeks. 

“What was _that_ about?”

Clarke shakes her head again, raising her eyes up to the sky. “Nothing,” she dismisses. “He’s just being dumb.” As she says that, the thief’s friend passes by them from the opposite direction and grabs a slipping branch from Clarke’s arms.

“Right,” Murphy says slowly, and Clarke huffs exasperatedly.

“It’s really nothing,” she sighs, trying to sound as convincing as possible, and heads over to the firewood pile so she can add back her missing wood. “They just like to mess around. They’re young. I’m practically ancient by their standards; easy prey.” Straightening up, pile teetering in her arms, she sends Murphy what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

“You’re not that old,” Murphy answers, “You’re literally twenty-three. And they’re all criminals. But… sure.” Clarke grins at him, and when his back is turned she glares at one of her wood thieves, adjusting the weight in her arms. He shrugs innocently while his friend pretends valiantly to ignore her.

(It’s not nothing. Her muscles are burning, her fingers shaky if she looks at them too long. She knows her façade of health is starting to crack, though she hasn’t really been putting effort into hiding it, but she’s got it under control.)

* * *

She’s drinking tea with the Wonkru woman, watching the sky as colours smear across the clouds. Her throat feels dry and sore, but the tea is temporary relief and Clarke is grateful for it.

“There is another _Skaikru_ on the ground,” the woman says conversationally, and Clarke sends her a surprised glance.

“Sha,” she replies, the Trig they speak in as familiar to her as English after six years with Madi. “His name is Murphy.”

“Hmm,” the woman replies, blowing a bit over her tea to watch the steam rise into the air. The air has grown cooler, in the past two weeks, and Clarke knows Raven is worried about what the seasonal shifts will be like. She hasn’t said so, but Clarke knows. “Are you friends?”

Blinking a bit, Clarke looks back at the woman. This is new territory for them. “I didn’t know every member of Skaikru,” she answers, bemused, then shrugs a bit. “But I knew him.”

“He has been asking about you,” the woman says. Clarke swallows her tea too harshly, burning her throat. She blinks again, eyes watering a bit with the pain, and stares at the woman across from her, perched calmly on a log.

“Oh,” Clarke manages after a moment, voice coming out too high to sound uninterested. She pauses. “Do you… know what he’s been asking?”

The woman shrugs. “I did not know you were a doctor,” she says. Clarke’s brows furrow, and she elaborates: “He asked why you weren’t on medical duty.”

“Oh,” Clarke replies, and she knows she sounds defeated, but she can’t really help it. “I wasn’t assigned any medical duties. I guess someone thinks I’m needed somewhere else.” She smiles a bit, into her tea, and she knows that’s a lie. Bellamy and Raven and Miller—they all know she’s at least medically capable, even if she’s nowhere close to Jackson or Abby in expertise. Maybe it’s because Wonkru or Eligius don’t trust her—though that mistrust has pretty much disappeared from the first landing group. Or maybe _they_ don’t trust her, don’t think she can do it, or just want her out of the way. The second option is infinitely more hurtful, and infinitely more likely.

The woman hums, and Clarke is grateful for her silent companionship. Tilting her head back up to the sky, she exhales through her mouth and watches the mist her breath creates as it floats up to the canvas of colour above her.

 

It rains, later that day. It _pours_. The rain thunders down, lightning flashing in the clouds, and the water comes down heavier than it usually was on earth.

Most of the Wonkru members are frightened of the scale of the storm, and even the few who laughed and danced when it began quickly shrink back and withdraw into tents. Eligius is even more nervous than the earth-grounders, clutching their sleeves and wringing their fingers together.

Clarke, standing in the middle of the camp and watching people run frantically around her, can’t find any fear within her. This is just a storm. She has lived through dozens of storms—most of them far worse than this. She has lived through _hurricanes_.

Grabbing hold of a Wonkru teenager as she jogs past, Clarke shrugs off her jacket and holds it out to the wide-eyed girl. “Would you hold on to this for me?”

The girl stares at her, then at the jacket, and back. “Where are you going?”

Clarke shrugs, smiling a bit, hair plastered down to her head. “Rain,” she says, “is not something I have reason to fear.” The girl gawks, confusion on her face, but she grabs hold of the jacket when Clarke presses it into her hands, and stumbles only slightly when Clarke gives her a gentle push towards a tent.

Slowly, around her, the camp empties as people huddle inside their tents, their nervous chatter drowned out by the immense thunder of the rain. Clarke holds out her hands to her side, turning in place, and catches sight of Shaw standing in the doorway of his tent.

He’s one of the new arrivals, but Clarke hasn’t seen too much of him since she knows Raven likes him. (She isn’t sure, exactly, why that’s such a strong incentive to stay away. Maybe he hates her, but maybe he _doesn’t_ , and Clarke has no idea what would hurt more. It’s far easier to stay somewhat removed, doing her jobs and reporting to him at the end of the day, and standing near the door though there’s space at the worktable.)

They make eye contact, and slowly Shaw raises a hand in hello. Clarke smiles, using one hand to push back some of the hair dangling over her face, and using the other hand to wave back. Then she turns her back on him and makes her way out of camp, lifting abandoned items out of puddles as she goes, humming under her breath.

Madi used to _love_ the rain.

At first, when they’d met, rain was a sign of instant danger, and they’d sprint for cover while trying vainly to protect their eyes and face. Back then, the rain burned. But after a couple years, slowly the rain’s bite faded, and blisters turned to only a slight sting, until finally the rain was pure enough to drink from. Madi would skip out of the rover, laughing, hopping in puddles just to make Clarke yelp. It didn’t matter how many times Clarke warned her about catching cold—when it came to rain, Madi was deaf to reason.

Lifting braches out of her path and hearing the echo of raindrops as they tumble from the sky onto leaves, Clarke thinks of Madi and for the first time it doesn’t hurt. She feels closer to her daughter than she has in what must be months.

 

Two days later, there’s another storm. Clarke realises it’s coming hours before anyone else does, and she mentions it to the Eligius duo, who stare at her. “You can just… tell?”

“You’ll learn how,” Clarke promises, but there’s wonder in their eyes. A few other people come up to her throughout the day, wondering, and Clarke answers them all with a shrug and tells them that they’ll find out if she’s wrong in a few hours.

She’s not wrong.

This time, when people dash madly for their tents, Clarke feels a tug on her sleeve. She turns, confused, to see the Wonkru girl, lips blue but cheeks flushed.

“Your jacket,” she says breathlessly, and Clarke looks at the girl’s shoulders, draped in Clarke’s jacket.

“Keep it,” she says slowly, and the girl worries her lip for a moment.

“Where are you going?”

Clarke doesn’t let herself show any of what she’s feeling on her face, watching the girl as she soaks, dark hair dripping. “This rain still doesn’t scare me,” she says softly, and the girl looks at her with an unreadable emotion, excitement visible in the whites of her knuckles as she grips Clarke’s jacket over her shoulder.

“Me neither,” the girl responds, and Clarke breathes out a laugh, eyes wide. This feels, finally, like the new beginning this planet had promised her all those weeks ago.

They head through the forest, mostly protected by the leafy roof, and the girl takes in the sight of the water-brightened world with sparkling eyes, and her awe lights something in Clarke’s chest, something she’d thought had frozen with Madi.

* * *

Things change, after that. Not with Bellamy, or Echo or even Murphy, but for Clarke. It’s as though she has suddenly remembered how to see the beauty in little things—or rather, that she’s remembered how to care about it.

She doesn’t walk quite so far away from the scouting groups anymore, and she sits beside other people at mealtimes. She teaches a few of the youngest how to whittle. The Eligius girl with freckles asks Clarke to braid her hair, clearly longing for Wonkru braids but far too intimidated to ask an actual member for instruction. She leans her back against logs at night and listens to Wonkru members trading their tribe’s stories from before Praimfaya.

Walking past Shaw’s tent one night, nearly three whole months since she’d last seen Madi, his voice is loud enough to slow her pace. “Raven,” he bursts out, and Clarke rarely hears him so exasperated. No one would tell her if something was wrong; Clarke doesn’t feel too bad about eavesdropping. “Raven, why don’t you just talk to her?”

Clarke doesn’t know what Raven says back, but her blood has already run cold. “Yeah, but I thought you were friends? I thought you were—yeah, I get that, but—look, Raven, you aren’t _here,_ and you were barely _there_. Haven’t you had enough time to grow beyond what happened?”

There’s a long silence. Clarke can feel the wind brushing her cheeks and the chill crawling down her spine. When Shaw next speaks, he sounds subdued. “Yeah. Sorry. I just… I didn’t get it. I won’t push you into anything you’re not okay with.”

Clarke barely even feels herself picking up pace as she rushes away from the tent, heading back into the woods, stumbling more clumsily than she has for years. Her blood is rushing but intermingled with the crushing sadness she feels, an anger grows. Shaw is right: Raven isn’t here, and she was barely on earth. And now, three months after Clarke’s world ended yet again, Raven hasn’t made any attempt to talk to her—pushes Clarke far away even when Clarke tentatively tries to ask how her day’s been.

Clarke knows she screwed things up with Raven, just as she did with the rest of Raven’s family. But she’s still working for them, still obeying Bellamy’s ridiculous job placements and dealing with Murphy’s barbed humour. She stays out of Echo’s way and doesn’t try to seek out Bellamy, and she’s trying to forget about the way he left her chained to a wall so he could push her daughter into the role she’d been trying to escape all her life.

She’s still trying. Why can’t they? Bellamy gives her jobs furthest away from camp, furthest away from him and Echo. Echo glares from across camp and refuses to even stand near Clarke. Raven won’t let her talk about anything unless it’s to report on the new planet’s readings. Murphy comes to her alternatively looking for a friend or a fight. Maybe she doesn’t deserve a fresh start, but doesn’t she at least deserve a break from their resentment?

 _They’ve had over a hundred years,_ Clarke thinks, and the anger makes her feel lighter, somehow. Of course she’s still sorry for hurting them, but she hasn’t ever been sorry for protecting her family. She’d assumed they’d figure that out—god knows she did, for them, for Bellamy especially.

Guilt has always weighed Clarke down, tugging on her ankles and pressing on her shoulders. She’s surprised to find that this, her dry anger, her frustration, don’t do the same.

Clarke is _dying_. She knows she is. It’s been three months, and things are only getting worse for her. She coughs up blood, on the really bad days, and she stumbles over non-existent roots on the best ones. She spends all day waiting to sleep but feels increasingly tired every morning. Her bones ache, and she’s losing weight she can’t afford to lose. She’s hyperaware of the faded burns on her skin, barely even visible after years of sun exposure but suddenly sore and aching with every movement.

 

Clarke stares at the setting sun, at the stars sparkling silver-blue above her. “I’m going to die,” she tells her new planet, and it feels like relief to tell _something_ , at least. It almost takes her back to six years ago, when she dared earth to try to kill her—now this new planet is succeeding without any work whatsoever. “I’m going to die,” Clarke says again, her legs folded as she sits on a marbled green cliff face, heart still beating, voice still present.

Her old friends may only ever remember her for her mistakes, faults both past and present, but there are just over a hundred other people on this planet who Clarke sees every morning, and more still yet to come. There are girls whose hair she braids, and boys she teaches to climb trees. “I’m going to die,” Clarke whispers, “but I’m not going to die like I deserved to. I’m going to be remembered for something other than my sins.” Not by the people she once called family, not by those she knew as friends, but by the others. Those who suffered under Octavia’s decrees and those who slept in graves they weren’t meant to escape. There are people here who deserve better, who deserve to enter this new life with knowledge of how to live without fear.

This is a new planet, and Clarke is so tired of being considered according to a long-gone past. She’s going to live until she has to die, and her life no longer has no room for ghosts.

* * *

There are little things she does, at first. Learning people’s names and _using_ them, slowly reminding them that they are worth more than the skills they have to offer. The girl who joined Clarke in the rain is called K’Rhea. The youngest member of Eligius, seventeen and wide-eyed, is called Torren. Merrick always steals the ripest berries, and Iesha picks fights when she’s bored. Sekani thinks Aniyah is pretty, but Aniyah has been sighing dreamily at Leelan’s back for weeks now, even though Leelan sneaks off with D’Vante when no one’s looking. These are people with lives and loves, learning about life in peace-time, and Clarke discovers that she wants—actually wants—to be a part of it.

She teaches some of the younger ones how to whittle spoons, not knives or weapons like they’d been told to, and rolls her eyes in Bellamy’s direction even though she knows he isn’t looking. She guides those who ask through the forest, even though they’re not supposed to wander. Technically they’re in a group, even if it’s just three of them and then four and then seven, and Clarke can’t stand to see Arkadia’s mistakes repeated here. “This world doesn’t belong to anyone,” Clarke tells them in a whisper, when they gawk at a flower she’d discovered weeks beforehand, as big as Clarke’s head. “Life is about more than just surviving.” (The flower wasn’t important enough to show everyone since it wasn’t deemed related to their immediate survival. Clarke wishes she hadn’t listened, but what matters is that she’s stopped.)

She chatters in Trig with some of the older Wonkru representatives, using her hands as part of the language in a way Madi outgrew a few years ago. A few of the Eligius members ask her to teach them—too intimidated by Wonkru but too curious to stay away—and Clarke doesn’t hesitate. “On the ark, we spoke French and Portugese and Spanish and Mandarin and more,” Clarke murmurs to the group of six who surround her. “On earth, factions of the earthborn created a dialect to trick those who wanted them dead. Cultures should be carried on.”

She shows K’Rhea and the freckled girl and a few others how to braid their hair—the same way Madi always wanted hers done. Sitting on her bent legs, watching the women and men as they laugh and chatter in a line, listening as their nerves fade away in the face of commonality, Clarke can almost forget that she hasn’t talked to Bellamy in weeks, that Raven doesn’t let her do the reports anymore. Murphy meets her eyes, from across camp, and she can tell from the line of his jaw that he wants someone to fight with, but K’Rhea touches her wrist to ask a question and Clarke turns away.

Once, Clarke ran to grounders and their culture in order to hide from hers. This time, Clarke decides to be a part of this planet’s newly-forming culture and its people because hers are still in hiding.

She isn’t dead, at least not yet, and she’s doing her best to surround herself with as much life as she can because she is _not a fossil_.

* * *

“Hey, Clarke, uh.”

Clarke turns to face Shaw, surprised, and he hovers uncertainty. The meal she’d brought him is clenched in his hands, and she waits for him to decide what he’s going to say, trying to stamp down the tension building in her shoulders.

“The others are planning to wake up Octavia and bring her down here,” Shaw blurts out, all in a big rush. “I thought you deserved to know.” Clarke stares at him, and she knows she should thank him for telling her what her old friends didn’t, but all she can think is _MadiMadiMadi_.

“Thank you,” she manages anyway, her voice strangled, and Shaw’s nervous gaze follows her as she stumbles out of the tent. The serenity of the past couple weeks is gone—Clarke’s heart is pounding, her chest heaving as her lungs struggle to take in air. Around her the air thrums with conversation as groups eat, seated around fires and laughing in a way they’ve only just relearned.

Bellamy and Echo, side by side, sit a sight distance from one of the fires. Clarke is making her way over to them before she’s even realised it. When she reaches them, still feeling frighteningly off-kilter, Echo raises her chin too high to be anything but confrontational. Bellamy still won’t meet her eyes.

“Hi,” Clarke says, and she knows how she sounds, speaking more brusquely to them than she has for months. “I heard you’re planning to wake up Octavia?” And Madi will be next, or even before. Clarke knows that better than she knows them.

“Who told you that?” Bellamy sounds equal parts taken aback and defensive, and Clarke leans back on her heels.

“It’s true, then?”

Bellamy and Echo exchange glances. “We were thinking of it, yes,” Bellamy says, and Clarke tries not to show her disbelief.

“You were thinking of bringing Wonkru’s ex-dictator down to the ground when people are just learning how to coexist?”

Bellamy scowls. “She wasn’t a dictator,” he mutters feebly. Clarke knows he thought the same, she _knows_ , so why is he disagreeing now?

“Bellamy,” Clarke says slowly, “Wonkru and Eligius will never learn to overcome their grudges if you throw their leaders before them. You can’t move on from war when generals are still giving orders.”

Echo speaks up suddenly, matching Clarke’s gaze with her own icy one. “Are you really concerned about the good of the people,” she asks, showing her disdain for that theory in her tone, “or are you just trying to prolong Madi’s sleep?”

Clarke looks at her, and feels everything from the past few minutes, the stunned shock and the disbelief, flow through her and disappear in an instant. She wants to be angry with Echo, but she can’t be. “Of course I want to keep Madi from dealing with the guilt that will come from inadvertently starting a civil war and creating long-lasting division,” she answers. “But I wasn’t talking about Madi. I know it’s too late for her to make that choice.”

Clarke straightens her spine and looks directly at the pair from space. “I thought this planet was supposed to be born from something other than the past,” she says, “but if you let Octavia—or Madi, or Diyoza—come down onto the ground before their people are ready for them, all you’ll do is bring us back to where we were on Earth, burning the only living place on the planet. People here are happy and thriving and deserve every opportunity to forge their own lives away from the whims of their misguided leaders, _together_. If you can’t see that…” she shrugs. The duo’s silent.

“I guess if you can’t see that, you’ll never really understand what went wrong on Earth, and all humanity will ever do is keep repeating the same mistakes that Monty and Harper died trying to prevent.” Neither of them says anything in the silence that follows, so Clarke purses her lips and swivels on her heels, turning away from them, unsure if she wants to cry or scream.

 

The ship comes back two days later, carrying another thirty passengers grey-faced from space and wide-eyed at the world around them. Octavia isn’t one of them. Neither is Madi.

* * *

Miller finds her in the woods, leaning a hand on a tree trunk and using the other hand to cover her eyes as she waits for a dizzy spell to pass.

“What the fuck,” says Miller, and Clarke starts violently. It’s another sign; she isn’t usually caught off guard anymore.

Miller, who’s been nothing but hostile since he came up from the bunker, is eyeing Clarke warily, like he’s forgotten that he hates everything about her now. “Uh, hi,” says Clarke uncertainty , trying to straighten up but failing miserably when another wave of dizziness hits and sends her back to leaning heavily on the tree.

Miller stares at her, and she looks back at him, and the entire situation is just ridiculous. Clarke would blush if she gave a shit what Miller thought of her, but she just _doesn’t_. The growing pain behind her eyes staves off the worry that he’ll report back to Bellamy or Raven, so all she can feel is the smallest twinge of irritation when he continues to stare.

He won’t ask her if she’s okay and she knows that, and she won’t ask him if he needs something because she’d be admitting that she isn’t supposed to be out of camp, so instead they’re both caught in the awkward unease of seeing someone you used to care about and knowing you no longer do.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Miller says eventually. Clarke, with a hand over her eyes, snorts.

“Because you were always such a good rule-follower,” she retorts, without any sharpness to her voice, “though I guess that’s changed too.”

Miller doesn’t bristle, but he scowls and looks down at his Wonkru clothes somewhat self-consciously, then scowls harder when he realises what he’s done.

Clarke sighs. “Okay, Miller. I’ll lead back in just a minute. I just needed some fresh air.”

“This entire planet is fresh air,” Miller snaps, but he doesn’t step towards or away from her. There’s a rifle in his hands. As Clarke lowers herself gingerly to the ground, clumsier than she ever used to be, he watches her curiously. The pounding in her head and the dots in her vision keep her from lashing out, so she tips her head back against the bark and tires to pretend he and his stupid rifle are back at camp. 

It mostly works until Miller speaks up again. “You’re not contagious, are you?”

Clarke doesn’t open her eyes. “Don’t be stupid, Miller, I’m not sick.” It’s a bigger lie than it is a denial.

“You look sick.”

“I look fine.”

“My boyfriend’s a doctor, I know what sick looks like.” Clarke cracks open an eye, and then winces and shuts it again.

“Jackson? Congrats.”

If Miller reacts, she doesn’t see it.

“You should get someone to look you over.” It’s the closest to kind that any of her old friends have been in the past few weeks, but Clarke’s suddenly so tired of this conversation.

“Thanks, but I’m perfectly capable of self-diagnosing, and also diagnosing in general. Just because you’ve all forgotten I took care of those kids back in the dropship doesn’t mean I have.”

He doesn’t follow her when she pushes up from the ground and brushes past him to head back to camp, biting her lip to keep from crying out against the pain of sudden movement and the pike in her skull.

 

The camp is full of noise, the fear of the first arrivals having long since thawed and the others tentatively following their example. K’Rhea reaches up to catch Clarke’s wrist when she stumbles by, and the concern in her eyes grows when Clarke has to squint to see her.

“Come to my tent,” she whispers into Clarke’s ear, linking their arms together. “You can hide there.”

“’M not hiding,” Clarke protests loudly, but K’Rhea shakes her head.

“The new guard, Miller? He assigned two guards to watch your tent while you were in the woods.”

The news, so soon after her conversation with him in the woods, breaks something already bruised inside of Clarke. A few hot tears slide down her cheeks and Clarke is too exhausted to hide them, but she doesn’t need to worry—around her, it’s as though she’s become invisible. The oldest arrivals, those in the first landing party with Clarke primarily from what was once Wonkru, bunch together casually and allow K’Rhea to guide Clarke through their masses with ease, effectively blanketing her from the view of Miller’s new men who watch over the camps from all angles.

“Migraines ailed my mother and sister too,” K’Rhea tells Clarke in a hushed voice once they’ve been squirrelled away into the younger girl’s tent. Her fingers brush over Clarke’s cheeks, and the kindness in her eyes looks nothing like pity. “Do not worry, _Klark_. No one will tell them you are here.”

“Division is the last thing I want,” Clarke protests, but K’Rhea crunches her nose up.

“These new men with guns follow Miller who follows _Blodreina_ , and those in space, all who have yet to live on this ground.” Her hands cup Clarke’s face, and there is fierceness in her eyes. “They do not understand the way things have grown to be. They will learn, but it is not your job to bear each injustice. No one will tell them you are here, Clarke.”

Clarke, shaking her head, barely hearing each word through the haze in her mind, fumbles for something to say.

K’Rhea guides Clarke to a mattress roll in the corner. “There are people who care for you here, Clarke. Not everyone is an enemy.”

“They aren’t my enemies,” Clarke mumbles distantly. “They are just people who have learned from my past.”

“I didn’t say it was _you_ who saw _them_ as enemies.”

As K’Rhea turns to leave, Clarke stops her with a hand on her arm. “It’s not a migraine, K’Rhea.”

K’Rhea, half-hidden by the darkness in the tent, tries for a smile. “ _Sha_ ,” she whispers, and Clarke can appreciate the lack of pity in her voice. “It isn’t.”

* * *

Waking a few hours later, it takes Clarke a few minutes to realise where she is and how she got there.  Blinking, she turns onto her back on K’Rhea’s cot, arms sprawling. Brushing her hand under her nose, her fingertips come away red. Clarke’s never had frequent nosebleeds before, and the comfort of a sleep-addled mind fades away at the sight.

Through the thin tent walls, she can see the lightness of the sky, signalling that she’d slept the whole night through. The head-splitting pain of last night is gone, but Clarke can still feel a pressure on her skull. Swinging her legs gingerly over the side of the cot, pushing herself up and resting her head in her hands for a moment, she takes a deep breath. She feels dangerously on the verge of tears yet again and allows herself a moment to collect herself before pushing it all aside.

Stepping past the sleeping bodies of two of K’Rhea’s roommates, Clarke pushes the tent flap aside and welcomes the sting that the light brings to her eyes. Looking at the camp around her, Clarke lets her mind still and simply takes it all in—the dozens of tents, growing in number, the firepits and the satellites. This is not a home. Bellamy, and whatever council makes decisions these days—they’d wanted to scope out more territory before settling anywhere, had said that building houses was a waste of resources until they knew where to set up a more permanent village and were sure of their safety. But Clarke knows, now, that the people on the ground are ready for permanence.

As she heads through the camp, a few people brush their hands against her arms or clothes in silent gestures of comfort. It’s so inherently kind that Clarke isn’t quite sure what to do with herself—the last time she was surrounded by this many people who didn’t hold some kind of grudge against her must have been up on the Ark, and even then, social classes drew people into hierarchal taboos.

All throughout the day, as she dutifully helps unload equipment for Shaw and joins a team of food gatherers, she comes across those who smile distantly at her or don’t avoid her gaze. It isn’t blatant friendship, or pity, but it feels like acceptance, like silent camaraderie. Echo breezes past Clarke and sends Clarke stumbling, and two separate sets of arms reach out to steady her. Echo doesn’t look back, but Clarke isn’t looking at her and doesn’t care.

 _Echo_. It’s hard not to be angry, at her, about her. Clarke tried so hard for Madi, and by the time six years rolled around had lost all resentment for the other woman. Six years is a long time, after all, and if the others could row to love her then she was someone worth loving.

Then the ground happened.

Now, on this planet of dusky skies and more green than Clarke has seen for six years, she wonders where they stand with each other. Echo clearly wants nothing to do with her, but Clarke just… she could accept it, but… Echo could be a friend. Clarke truly believes that. The real question is whether Clarke wants to try.

 

She starts small. Smiling at Echo across camp, standing next to her in debrief sessions. Echo seems supremely uncomfortable at first, and then just extremely confused. Clarke doesn’t mind. It’s better to be the object of bemusement than the object of pure hatred.

From there, not having received any hostility, Clarke starts bringing Echo tea on her night shifts. Echo scowls at her—and there’s the hostility—but she accepts it warily. Clarke, not willing to give up quite yet, even resorts to an actual sentence: “Hey, Gomez wanted to know if you wanted to come on evening patrol?”

Echo stares at her. They’re in the middle of camp, but Clarke doesn’t really think she’ll try something with so many people around and she’s long since grown out of the fear of humiliation. “Fine,” Echo says eventually, tone curt.

“Okay, I’ll tell him—”

“ _Jok yu,_ Clarke,” Echo spits. “I don’t need you to speak for me.”

Clarke closes her mouth.

“I don’t really want you to speak to me all,” Echo continues, without the venom that her first words held. When the venom is gone, only the truth remains.

Clarke shrugs, turns around, and leaves.

 

She stops standing next to Echo at debrief sessions. She stops smiling at her. 

She stops caring, mostly, and they both seem to be fine with that.

* * *

The camp is always busy. Clarke can almost pretend that Echo- and Bellamy, always Bellamy- aren't even there. She barely sees them anyway. 

* * *

One night finds Clarke sitting around the fire pit. It’s late—the stars are gleaming, and most people are asleep in their tents. Clarke has begun having trouble falling asleep, though, and she’s trying to soak up as much warmth as she can before resigning herself to a night of tossing and turning.

Staring at the flames, alone, a deep ache rises in her chest when she remembers just a few months ago, how Madi looked at her, how they sat together safe in the comfort and protection that love provided them.

Clarke suddenly chokes on a sob, the noise echoing in the silence of the sleeping camp. She buries her face in her hands, resting her elbows on her knees, and allows her shoulders to shake.

It’s hard to breathe, some days, and not just because of the tightening of her chest. Missing Madi is a physical pain, and Clarke feels it _all the time_.  

She’s so quietly distraught that she doesn’t even hear the approaching footsteps, and flinches violently when someone says her name in confused alarm. Looking up abruptly, squinting a little in the darkness, Clarke scrubs a hand across her cheek. Shaw looks back at her, his face a little pale.

They stare at each other, Clarke slumped over her knees with tear-painted cheeks. “Hey,” Shaw says eventually.

“Hi,” Clarke croaks, and straightens so that she’s sitting properly on the fallen log.

“Can I sit?”

Clarke waves a hand, and he falls onto the log beside hers without any semblance of grace.

When the silence stretches too long, he speaks again. “One of those days, huh?” Clarke knows he’s just trying to fill the void between them—between her and everyone around her—but she doesn’t have the energy to give him anything back. Instead she snorts, and lets herself fall forward again, catching her face in her hands and resting elbows on knees.

The silence stretches, and grows, and plants itself in the ground between them.

“Ah, I’m sorry, Clarke.”

Clarke looks up, bleary-eyed, when Shaw sighs and speaks. A time had passed, she wasn’t even sure he was still there.

“What?”

Shaw shrugs, looking away from her, face pained. “All this. You seem… well, you’ve always been kind to me.”

Clarke continues to look at him, and she feels a kindling of affection spark up in her chest, alongside the confusion.

“I just…” he gestures at the camp. “You gotta lot to deal with.”

Clarke, to her surprise, cracks a smile. “Does it help that I’ve dealt with worse?”

Shaw looks at her, starts in surprise at her smile, but his responding smile slips off quickly. “Have you? Like this?”

Clarke regards him, and her own smile droops a bit, though it doesn’t entirely abandon her. She shrugs. “It’s all relative, or something.” She remembers Mount Weather, how Jasper called her a _danger_ , and how she had to fight her way out of the real danger alone and undefended. She remembers, also, Bellamy greeting her home with open arms. Madi would have been hiding under the floor in those days.

“Still, I’m sorry, I guess.”

Clarke sends him a warmer smile, the edges softened. “You don’t have anything to apologise for, Shaw.”

He meets her eyes. “Zeke.”

She still can’t fall asleep that night, but her thoughts aren’t as depressive as they usually are. She’s glad Raven has him. She’s glad he has her. Together, they will be galaxies and novas and all the brightest things the universe has to offer.

* * *

Some days, she really misses Bellamy. He avoids her at camp, and it doesn't hurt quite as much as him handcuffing her to a table or him chaining her to a wall, but it's up there. She wants her friend back. It hurts, so much, to realise that no matter what they once were or could have become- they aren't _anything_  anymore. 

Being nothing to Bellamy Blake is not something Clarke ever thought she would be. (And how far she's come from the seventeen year old who was so scared of the boy with the gelled hair and the power he used without any fear of consequences.)

* * *

She comes back from a four-day trail-blazing trip three days later, further than they’ve been before, with shaking hands and spotty vision but a smile on her face. The group she travelled with wasn’t full of strange faces, and she enjoys hiking after six years of doing little else.

Stumbling back into camp, ignoring the worried gaze of one of the girls from the trip, it’s immediately noticeable that something is different. There’s a silence in the air. A tension that hasn’t been visible for weeks suddenly shimmers between groups, and Clarke and the others from the trip falter in their steps. The entirety of the camp is gathered in its centre, around Miller and some of the other guards. Miller’s hands are up: the reason for the disquieting silence.

K’Rhea emerges from the crowd, finding her way to Clarke’s side. Her eyes are wary. “K’Rhea,” Clarke breathes, trying to stamp down the irrational panic she feels crawling up her throat. Six years of solitude have allowed paranoia to overtake her too quickly. “What’s happening?”

K’Rhea bites her lip, and a few of the others from the trip gather around her as well while the rest disappear into the crowd.

“Klark,” she whispers, “While you were gone—”

Miller’s voice cuts her off. “As I was saying,” he calls out, “We all need to be prepared for tomorrow. It won’t be an easy transition, when the ship comes down, but I trust that everyone here has picked up enough that they can carry out their roles like normal, and…”

He keeps talking, but Clarke stops listening. She turns to K’Rhea, blood rushing in her ears, and the world seems to slow around her as her pulse pounds. “They’re coming down, Klark. All of them.”    


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone out there is still following this story: I am so sorry for the awful delay!!!! so so so sorry!! I entirely lost my motivation for this story, and much of my interest in the the show. I came upon it yesterday and accidentally entered a writing coma in an attempt to create something a bit more polished to present to you, and here we are, 8k words later. I'm sorry if this doesn't live to last chapter. I did my best. :)
> 
> secondly, I think this is going to be my last 100 fic for a long while. so, in a way, this is a bit of a love letter to the show, and to its characters. I did my best to make it as soft and gentle as I always thought they deserved. I hope there's some resolution in it, and the ending doesn't disappoint. it's not perfect, but it's kind. healing isn't linear, but there's a destination to reach, and that's what matters.

They assign her to a scouting mission, five days there and five days back.

“Are you sure?” Shaw is frowning, but Bellamy doesn’t overthink it.

“She’s one of the best hikers,” he says firmly. “She’s the best at map-making. Getting anyone else to lead the expedition wouldn’t make sense.”

“To lead the expedition.” Shaw sounds unimpressed.

“You don’t sound like you agree.” Echo rarely interacts with Shaw, but she’s making an exception. She wants to know if Shaw trusts Clarke.

Shaw raises his eyebrows and huffs but doesn’t say anything more.

“Well, if that’s settled,” Bellamy says, and points to the roster, “Garcia will be your right-hand this week, Miller, and—”

“Wait,” Shaw snaps. “Sorry, I—” He hesitates. They all watch him, this circle of enemies who learned to be friends and friends who learned to be enemies. (Bellamy misses Miller. He really, really, misses Miller. Miller is standing beside him right now, but it’s not the same and everything is different.) “It’s just. Well. Don’t you think Clarke should be here to see everyone come down? They’re—” he hesitates. “And Madi is coming down. That’s her kid, you shouldn’t just…” He trails off, but his point is clear.

Echo shares a look with Bellamy, and he stifles a frown. “Madi can’t be introduced as a strong leader if Clarke is breathing down her neck,” Echo says. Bellamy hides his wince.

Shaw, predictably, jumps on this. “So it _is_ about that.”

Echo levels Shaw with her cool gaze, but the other man just locks his jaw. “No. Clarke is the best person to lead this group, and—”

“You haven’t wanted her to lead anything before.”

“She hasn’t asked.”

“That’s not the—” Shaw breaks off, scowling sullenly. “Look. You may all have your issues with Clarke, whatever. You can’t just shuttle her off around the planet when you don’t feel like facing the ways things have changed.” An uneasy, uncomfortable silence falls over Shaw’s tent. “You’re being unfair.”

“Unfair?” Miller’s voice is incredulous, and Shaw squares his jaw under the tone.

“Yeah.” He carries on despite the looks he’s receiving. “You didn’t mean to, but you left her alone for six years—I know it wasn’t that simple, but it still happened—and now you’re purposefully isolating her? It’s…” He shrugs, frustrated and defensive over their confusion as to why he cares. “It’s petty. It's cruel.”

Echo’s eyebrows shoot up, and Bellamy’s arms tighten where they’re folded over his chest. “Petty?” Echo repeats. “She has quite literally endangered every single person in this tent; hell, on this planet.”

Shaw rolls his eyes and huffs. “Oh, because we’re all such saints.”

Echo scowls harder. “Clarke is a danger, Shaw. You don’t understand because you’ve never lived this type of war. We aren’t being cruel, I’m not saying this to be cruel, but it’s practical. It’s the smart thing to do, to get Clarke out of the way until the arrivals have settled in somewhat. There are still people who see her as Wanheda, and Heda will be put in a difficult position, and she’s not exactly been conductive to the peace treaties we’ve struggled to form.” Echo’s voice isn’t venomous, though her words are blunt.

Bellamy tries not to shift uncomfortably, but it’s hard to be confronted with truths you’d once have recoiled from. “Clarke,” and Echo’s voice is softer now, “isn’t going to be any help here, Shaw. Not now. But she _can_ help by mapping and exploring, which she’s good at.” Echo waits, but Shaw doesn’t reply and everyone else stays silent. “If I recall correctly, Clarke didn’t even want to come to this planet.” There's nothing anyone can say to that. They all know it's the truth. And yet, when Bellamy thinks about it, he almost thinks she's the most well-adjusted out of all of them. 

* * *

They send someone else to give her the news. Clarke thinks they’re cowards. She knows, she _knows_ she doesn’t have the right to judge them, but she _does,_ she _does_ judge them. They’re cowards if they can’t even face her when they’re running away. 

 _Hypocrite_ , says a voice in Clarke’s head. _Piss off_ , she tells it. _It’s been six years and also a century._

K’Rhea thinks they’re cowards too, though Clarke hasn’t told her that she agrees. K’Rhea is still so young, her face smooth and untouched by the sun. “This is bullshit,” she huffs. “This is—they’re bullshit.”

Atiyo, the boy with the Azgeda scars, frowns at her. “There is duty,” he says solemnly, and K’Rhea waves a hand at him.

“Yes, and there is family, and we all know Klark’s girl is up there, and someone else could do it, and none of the other skaikru are going away, and—” Her voice is irritated, sharp and brittle like Octavia’s, like Raven’s, but livelier. She’s still so young. There’s so much she hasn’t lost yet, or maybe it’s just that she hasn’t stopped fighting for it. 

“There is only what there is,” Clarke interrupts, before K’Rhea can continue. She’s still thinking about _Klark’s girl_ and _family._ “So I will go.”

K’Rhea looks away from her, jaw set, wisps of hair floating around her face. “They are sending you away because they are afraid to face you,” she mutters. “ _Branwada_ s.” Clarke rolls her eyes and reaches over to push the girl’s shoulder, like this is all easy. (It isn’t, but it’s not as hard as it maybe should be. They’re sending her away, but she’ll come back.) (She’s dying regardless.)

“It’s not the end of the world,” though her heart is ripping and tearing and _Madi’s coming down_ , “We’ve already been through that.” _Twice_. “Now tell me what you want to see before I have to go.”

Atiyo, legs crossed in front of him, brightens up. They’re used to this routine. “Animals, if you see them.”

“Naturally,” Clarke agrees. On a blank page in her sketchbook, she writes: _animals_. Adds a smiley face. The page will fill up over the next few hours, as more and more people ask her to be their eyes.

K’Rhea sighs, but her words show she’s dropped the subject: “A river? Bring me a stone.”

Clarke smiles lopsidedly. “Sure,” she agrees, no questions asked. “I’ll bring you the prettiest river stone I find.”

 

Early in the morning, when the sky is still green-pink-orange, Clarke sits down on her usual log and accepts the tea offered to her with cupped hands.

Her companion blows on her own tea, watching clouds twist and dance on their way to the sunrise.

“You’ll be gone soon,” she says, in Trig like always.

Clarke raises her eyebrows. “Scouting,” she agrees, “yes. Not for long, though.” She tries to smile, uneasy at the woman’s phrasing— _too close to the truth_ — but she's used to such statements from her early-morning companion.

The woman hums. “I will watch them for you,” she announces.

Clarke, confused, furrows her brow and tilts her head. (She tries not to be reminded of Echo and that conversation about blood and Bellamy.) “Who?” K’Rhea, Atiyo, any or all of the people she’s slowly growing fond of, Wonkru and Eligius alike, all still so _young_ and eager to learn about living? None of them are innocent, and all are capable of surviving in the hardest circumstances. 

The woman meets her eyes, firelight meeting with sunrise in their reflection. “The newcomers.” She shifts, sighs. She seems more human than she usually does. “Your girl.”

Clarke, uncomfortable, looks down at her tea and away from the woman. “I—thank you, but—she’s not. My girl.” She chews on her cheek, biting hard so she doesn’t do something stupid like start crying. Or find someone to hit. Grief and violence have looked so similar to her ever since the dropship first landed on Earth. “Madi, I mean. She’s supposed to be Heda now. I guess.”

The woman looks at her in the following silence, and her eyes are so much softer than they were a moment ago. Amused, maybe, or fond. “We’ll see.”

 

It happens again, later in the day. Clarke is in Shaw’s— _Zeke’s—_ tent, asking if he has any additional requests or orders for her on the trip. As she’s leaving, one hand pushing the tent’s flap, he stops her with a hesitant but firm grip on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye out for Madi. Protect her a bit, you know? I promise, uh, she’ll be safe.”

Clarke looks at him, and the warm thing pooling in her stomach is a footnote to the confusion she feels. She tries to smile at him, but she knows it looks sympathetic and a little pained. “Thanks, Zeke, but Madi’s Heda now, remember? She’ll be okay.” Clarke doesn’t believe that at all, but there’s supposedly power in words, and anything contradicting her lie isn’t supposed to be said anyway. Lexa was _Heda_ and look where that got her. No commander was ever safe, no commander ever had been—they all died young and lonely.

Zeke shrugs, his smile crooked. “I’ll do it anyway.”

“Thanks,” Clarke says, and her voice is rougher than usual.

As she closed the tent flap, Zeke calls out again: “And drink some water! Stay hydrated! You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

Her smile comes easy, this time, and she doesn’t bother replying.

 

Then she’s trekking to the north-most point of the camp, backpack on, wiping her mouth. (She’d vomited an hour after meeting with Zeke, even though all she’d eaten was an algae bar.) (Her fingers come back red.) Fingers touch her shoulder as a person brushes past her, and Clarke turns to catch a smile from an older Wonkru man. “Godspeed and safe travels, Klark,” he tells her in Trig. She smiles at him politely, and then does so again when a woman from Eligius shouts similar words at her from where she sits by a firepit.

All the way to the meeting point it keeps happening—people brushing her arms with their fingers, offering her nods or smiles or short sentences. (She knows it’s probably the same for the others going on this trip, or at least similar. Maybe that’s the best part. Humanity has remembered excitement, has relearned camaraderie. She’s so proud that it physically hurts.)

But it’s not just that, either. It’s throwaway words that stick out to Clarke like red flags: _we’ll keep an eye on your girl, don’t worry about your_ gada _, looking forward to meeting your mini-me, you’ll be seeing your_ strik won  _soon enough._

After the last well-wisher tells Clarke it’ll be _no time before you and your girl are back together again_ , Clarke stops and turns to Sae, an Eligius woman coming along on the trek who’s joined her on the way to the meeting point.

“Did they all forget Madi’s their Heda? Am I missing something?”

Sae shrugs, her dreads swinging a bit as the wind blows past them. She’s got a beautiful smile. “She’s a kid, come off it, Clarke.”

“A kid who’s got an _AI in her head_.”

Sae side-eyes her. “That’s freaky as all hell, not impressive.”

Clarke blows out a gust of frustrated air. “ _I know that_ , but these people—or, well, Wonkru—they believe in that stuff. Heda isn’t really… a person to them.”

Sae looks at Clarke, a bit differently. She shrugs again. “Maybe that changes when Heda’s twelve years old and everyone here’s spent the last couple months getting to know her mom.” Clarke doesn’t say anything else on the way to the meeting point, brow furrowed and eyes on the ground. She’s thinking analytically, calculatingly, politically-minded. (Like a _leader_ , which she’s _not_. She never really was. She was eighteen and a feeble mimicry of someone who knew what they were doing. She was an illusion, and then she was too honest.) Clarke hasn’t really thought like this in years; she hasn’t needed to. Sae bumps shoulder with her, just briefly. “Chin up, Griffin. We’ve got a long way to go. Your girl can wait.”

Clarke thinks about that and the blood in her mouth, and vows to try and stop thinking about it. She won’t be back in this camp for almost two weeks, and if she lets herself, she’ll spend that time torturing herself with what-ifs. It’s not just Madi coming to the ground. (Though Clarke has to remind herself.) It’s Raven, and Octavia, and _Jordan_ , and Emori and her mom and Kane and _everyone_. All of humanity. Everyone, all of them, in one place. God. Clarke wonders faintly if the expedition will return to anything at all, or if they’ll all kill each other within the first few hours and only smoking wreckage will remain. It wouldn’t be an unfamiliar sight. She tries to believe those at camp have grown beyond that. She tries to believe humanity wouldn’t destroy themselves like that. There are just so many things she’s seen and done that prove her wrong.

The group sets off quickly, the eight of them who’ve been selected to go farther than the camp has gone before. Everyone here is above age twenty, which is something of a relief—though Clarke had committed genocide by her nineteenth birthday she can’t understand what the hell Jaha and the council had been thinking sending juveniles to earth alone.

They’re silent, for the most part. A brown-skinned Wonkru girl and red-haired Eligius boy chatter together, flirting through banter. Clarke hears one of the older Eligius women— she thinks her name is Mandy—ask Sae why a sick woman was assigned to a two-week mission on foot. Sae shrugs in response. Clarke bites her tongue, helpless and embarrassed and angry, trying not to care.

The ground under their feet has become familiar to them over their time on this planet, and they move quickly—by the time the fourth hour rolls around, they’ve diverged from known territory and Clarke is fighting a headache. Just after midday, Mandy calls them to a halt (she’s _somewhat_ in charge, maybe on merit of age alone) and stares Clarke down until she takes a reluctant drink from her canteen. She’d only just come back from a scouting mission and now she’s headed on another trip, double the length of the last one. Her eyes ache, as though they’ve taken in too much sunlight after a night of drinking. They’re trekking up, the ground isn’t flat under their feet, and Clarke squares her jaw because she knows it’ll only get worse from here.

 

The days pass. The land is beautiful, bright and mossy, and the air is thick and warm when the wind isn’t blowing. This planet is like nothing Clarke has ever felt, and she lived through a nuclear meltdown. At night, when it’s already been dark for a couple hours, they set up camp and light a fire. Clarke sits down with the excuse of refining the map, adding details or smoothing out the paths they’ve taken. The others take turn foraging, and if there’s nothing to find then they split rations of algae bars. There’s a bearded Wonkru man, at least a few years older than Clarke, who sits beside her and whittles. He gives her one of the rough carvings on the fourth night away from camp, and Clarke keeps the intricate bird in her pack, remembering metal deer with two heads and matching origami ravens.  

The group gradually gets to know each other, because there isn’t an alternative. They’ve all got names and lives and hopes. Most don’t have family anymore, although the whittler has a sister and a nephew. His name is Kyro, and when he talks about his nephew his face goes so soft it hurts to look at. The redhead from Eligius is called Gabe, and Sage is the Wonkru girl who’s been flirting with him. Benji and Roen are Wonkru, and Sae and Mandy are Eligius, and Clarke is from no one, and that’s their group. It hurts, a bit, because Clarke sometimes struggles to remember those early days on the ground but she will always remember the trip with _Finn, Octavia, Monty, Jasper_. She remembers how quickly she grew to care about them—how she stood toe-to-toe with Bellamy in Jasper’s defence, how Jasper jumped in the river to save Octavia, how Octavia talked shit about Bellamy with Monty even though they barely knew each other.  She remembers Finn. He cared so much, back then. Finn from the early days would be horrified by the woman she’s become.

Clarke used to wonder what might have gone differently if the Mount Weather team hadn’t been _Finn, Octavia, Monty, Jasper, Clarke_. Everything, maybe. Or nothing. It’s all just down to luck, in the end, and circumstance. If Octavia had been the first to cross that river, would she have still fallen for Lincoln? Maybe she would never have been christened _Blodreina_ , maybe she’d have gone up to space with the others. If Clarke had been the first to cross, would she have died? How different would things have gone then? It does no good to think about the _what-ifs_ , but Clarke had six years and a lot of time with little else to do. _What-ifs_ are as familiar to her as breathing.

 

The terrain changes. The valleys grow steeper, mountaintops green and white and shining. Rivers become lakes, crystalline and aquamarine, clear under the sunlight and cool against Clarke’s skin when she wades in.

The sunset smears across the sky, a fire crackling in the centre of their makeshift camp every night as Gabe and Sage inch closer and closer together and Clarke perseveres through every rattling breath.

She finds a riverstone for K’Rhea, grey but with a swirling and somewhat opal surface. She doesn’t find any animals for Atiyo, but she never has before. She draws him a cavernous valley instead. The requests from other people aren’t forgotten either, rivers and constellations and trees and new flowers. Cameras were lost to time, but humanity’s lust for capturing beauty never faded.

 

The air is practically humming when they begin to recognise landmarks on the way home. Everyone’s bodies are tense, stiff with excitement or anticipation. Clarke is trying not to have expectations. She excuses herself and throws up in the bushes. She wipes her mouth and her hand comes back stained red but she’s grown to expect it. Kyro reaches out and grips her shoulder when she rejoins the group. He doesn’t look at her, but his hand is heavy and grounding.

She doesn’t want to go back, but she does, but she—

The chattering from the past few days is gone. Nobody speaks to each other, all caught up in their own heads. Clarke is reminded, all over again, that nobody here has a life any less complicated than her own. Gabe and Sage are walking beside each other but their eyes don’t meet. They’re nothing like Octavia and Lincoln were, but Clarke thinks of them anyway—she hopes things can be different for these two. What good would all her work have done if there are still restrictions on love? What worth would her sins have if people still live in cages when they're free? They stop for a water break, and Clarke doesn’t argue when Mandy presses her canteen into Clarke’s hands. The clear, shimmering water is a balm to her aching throat, and she presses her eyes shut to try and capture this moment in her memory forever: the companionship of the past couple weeks is still present, just softer. It has to be. Once, Clarke had jumped into friendship recklessly, skipped past small talk and kindness and headed straight to _they’re_ _my people_ with no holds barred. She doesn’t want that anymore. She’s learned that you can’t be friends with people you use as excuses, not really, and you _shouldn’t be_ , and just because you survive horrors with someone doesn’t mean they’re your family. They’d all clung to each other because they had nothing else, because they were teenagers and they were scared, but they didn’t know each other so how _could_ they care, how could they expect it to last? Clarke’s learned better now. _Friends_ should _mean_ something, shouldn’t just be another word for _people_.

The sun is golden and streaming through the leaves. There’s a cold canteen in her hands. Sage and Gabe are sitting next to each other, and their knees are touching now. Benji is rolling his eyes at something Sae is saying. They’re all good people. 

Clarke wonders how many of the men from the ring of fire at the dropship had smiles like Roen’s, had hair like Sage or nephews like Kyro’s. She wonders if Roen fought for Octavia eagerly, or if he had regret attached to his sword. She wonders if Madi will ever get to learn what society really looks like, or if she’s doomed to forever now see life through the lens of leadership. Clarke loved Lexa, will probably always love Lexa a little bit, but she doesn’t forget the way Lexa said leadership _was asking people to die for you_. Clarke had forgotten, somewhere along the line, that she disagreed. It’s easier to remember now.  

 

They’re close, now. They can hear it: a distant buzz of voices, louder than it ever has been. All of humanity beyond the trees. Nobody says anything, and Clarke is glad: saying something would be acknowledging it, this tension in the air, the knowledge that they’re returning to a life so much more complicated than it was when they left it. This group has been on the ground for weeks, and Eligius and Wonkru mean so much less than it once did to them. For the newcomers, fresh from space, nothing is guaranteed.

Clarke tries to swallow her fear. She knows nothing about what she’s going to walk into. For all she knows, Gaia and her followers are planning to remove Clarke from Madi’s life permanently, or Octavia’s brewing a revolt in her people, or Diyoza has laid down rules for her people that forbid fraternisation. There’s so much risk in coming back. Clarke clenches her fists and tucks her hair behind her ears and tells herself that she isn’t allowed to turn around.

“Ready to see your girl?” Benji is smiling at her, freckles crinkling on his cheeks.

Clarke bites back the usual: _she’s not my girl, she’s not mine, she’s Heda._ Repeat the words until they stop hurting. (It’ll never stop hurting. Her chest is a chasm and her heart is a hole.)

“Guess I have to be.”

Roen jostles her side, but not hard enough that she loses her balance. “Well, I am,” he answers. “We haven’t _all_ met little Griffin yet.”  

Clarke turns her head to look at him, disbelief warring with acceptance. “I doubt she’s what you think she is,” she says finally. _She’s not my little girl. She’s not a little Griffin. She’s a Heda and there are voices in her head and wires in her neck._

Sae rolls her eyes fondly. “God. You’re such a drama queen, Griffin. Madi’s, what, twelve?” She winks. “Pre-teens: they’re all the same.”

 “I had already killed a man by my twelfth birthday,” Roen argues, sounding insulted.

“Big deal,” Sae shoots back, over Mandy’s muttered _Jesus Christ,_ “My halo kill count was over two thousand.”

Roen’s brow furrows in confusion but Benji whistles, impressed. “What is a halo?”

Sae grins, slinging an arm over his shoulders as though they aren’t the same height. “The greatest warrior initiation of my time, discounting the legendary quests of Fortnight and Minecraft—” Mandy protests in loud exasperation, and Clarke lets the sun warm her skin and these people warm her heart.

 

Atiyo meets her at the gate, and before she can overthink it she lets herself pull him towards her lightly, hugging him for just the briefest of moments—he’s smiling at her when she pulls away.

“Good trip?”

Clarke shrugs. She’s so much more anxious to hear what he has to say that the last ten days have been cast far from her mind.

Atiyo, judging from the knowing look in his eyes, can tell. Maybe she’s gotten worse at disguising what she’s thinking, or maybe she just doesn’t care about trying anymore. The others from the excursion begin to part ways, lingering touches on each other’s arms and shoulders, promising to meet up at the firepit within the next few days, _give your nephew a hug from me, Kyro!_ and Mandy tells Clarke to give her report to Shaw first.

Maybe Mandy thinks she’s being kind, but Clarke wishes she could have had a moment to ask K’Rhea and the others she’s learning to trust about the latest arrivals. All of Earth’s society is suddenly existing in the same place, breathing the same air. She wants to know, she wants to hear about how it’s been going, because Bellamy and the others didn’t let her see it, but instead she will have to wait until after she’s told Shaw about the mountains and the lakes and the canyons.

Atiyo bumps her shoulder. “Come find us when you’re done with Shaw,” he says. “We’re all excited to see the pictures.” Clarke sends him a smile, grateful for his reassurance of her new normality in this camp.

“Sure,” Clarke agrees. She clears her throat, adjusting the weight on her shoulders, and sets off towards Zeke’s tent. The camp has grown, it’s evident in every respect, but as Clarke walks she is still shown familiar smiles, people waving at her or brushing up against her arms in greeting. She is welcomed back with easy embraces and silent recognition, and for the woman who used to be a girl so horrified by her unmistakable legacy, it is the quiet companionship she never dreamed she’d be able to find.

* * *

Raven’s scowling at the map in front of her, furrowing her brow as though her annoyance could fill in the blank spaces. Bellamy sits on the stool beside her, leaning his elbows on Shaw’s desk. Shaw himself is trying to explain, once again, which areas of this planet hold which plants, and Bellamy is trying to remember that this is important information, that it matters much more than—someone outside the tent clears their throat.

“A report for Shaw?” Shaw looks up from the map, though Raven stays fixated on it and Bellamy himself quietly returns his attention to the surface of Shaw’s desk.

“Send them in,” Shaw replies, and in his peripheral vision Bellamy sees the guard’s hand sweeping the tent’s flap aside before Shaw suddenly straightens up.

“Hey!” His voice is excited and friendly enough that Bellamy looks up in surprise, only to see Clarke, for the first time in almost two weeks now, looking less than overjoyed at realising Shaw’s tent wasn’t empty. “Clarke, hi, how was it?”

Clarke shifts her bag uncomfortably at his exuberant tone, eyes shooting back and forth between Shaw and Raven and Bellamy. “Fine,” she says slowly, somewhat stiffly, clearly caught off guard. “I can come back another time, if…” She trails off and the distance between them all seems to yawn wider and wider in the silence.

Raven straightens up too, her hands bracing her weight up against the desk. “You can say whatever it is you want to say to _all_ of us.”

Clarke’s jaw shifts; something Raven’s said has annoyed her. “Sure, it’s just the expedition report. Mandy will probably come by later for a more detailed report; I just have the map.” Bellamy isn’t sure why he still expects Clarke to bite back. She hasn’t done it for months now. The Clarke he remembers from Before would have been confident and bold and assured, but now she swallows back her every thought and strangles her words. It should make everything easier, but it doesn’t.

Shaw gestures encouragingly, and Clarke swings her bag forward to rummage around within it and pull out a battered black book. Her movements are uncertain and Shaw’s face unhappily pinched. Clarke steps forward: one, twice, five times, until she’s close enough to place the book on the desk and flip through the pages. She does so too quickly for Bellamy to be able to properly see anything, but he catches glimpses of faces and flowers, winding rivers and towering mountains and plumes of smoke. Had he known Clarke could draw like that? She reaches the page she was searching for quickly, pulling out a folded piece of paper which she carefully unfolds and places onto the desk, smoothing out the creases with her fingers.

Shaw grins at her, stepping closer to her as though to clap her shoulder or something, but he falters, and Clarke pretends she didn’t see, though Raven’s eyebrows raise incredulously. Clarke’s hands float uselessly above the desk before she draws them away, too quickly, to hover by her sides instead.

“Thank you so much,” Shaw continues, as if they aren’t all suspended in this terrible and all-encompassing tension, “this is great, Clarke. Your work is a gift, as always.” A pause, where he probably regrets his over-compensation for the silence, and then he does his best to help her out: “You can go, uh… Mandy will give us the full debrief soon enough. I’m sure there’s— some friends waiting for you.” Clarke sends him a weak smile, polite but nothing else, and Bellamy wonders what she thinks about Shaw saying _us_ and not meaning her, thinks about what Shaw was going to say before he said _some friends_ and what he means by it, and wonders who _some friends_ even are anymore.

Just before Clarke leaves the tent, she pauses and turns around to face them all again Her eyes find Raven’s face with something of the old determination she used to wear like armour. “It’s nice to see you, Raven.” Her eyes flick to Bellamy’s for only the tiniest of seconds, and then she’s gone.

There’s an uncomfortable silence. Shaw is looking at the table very determinedly, glancing up at Raven after a pause. Raven pretends she doesn’t see him looking at her, and Bellamy tries to drown out the confusion in his head, the voice of Bellamy from six years ago who’d learned how to let himself care.

Things haven’t been how Bellamy had thought they would be. They’re all surprised, caught off guard, by the little changes which have occurred without their involvement or awareness. It’s in the resentment bubbling in the eyes of Eligius when Bellamy assigns them roles unsuited to their talents, and the scowls Wonkru wear when Echo tells them to prioritise practicality over discovery. They can’t afford to pick and choose, not in these early days of new life, and society from a year ago would have agreed. 

If Bellamy had to give it a name, he’d call it an underground revolution, a cultural resistance of some sort. People are, against all odds, _tired_ of fighting. Tired of living the way they have to, with knives and fists and bared teeth. The bare minimum isn't enough anymore. Scavenger groups come back with flowers, not dirt samples. Expeditions came back with drawings, not maps. When they talk about the potential for other inhabitants of the land, they sound excited.

Bellamy is fascinated by it as much as he is frustrated. Though it is counterproductive, non-essential and reckless, he can’t help but be amazed. Bellamy never used to have hope for humanity, but then the hundred came barrelling into his life and that changed, and then after everything with the wars and Lexa and Azgeda and Wonkru it changed again until Bellamy’s hope was reserved for a small and select group of people. It’s not that he stopped caring, or that he never had—it’s just that he forgot, forgot that humans are capable of empathy, that they have a driving need to evolve, not just survive.

Things have changed on this planet. When he and Echo first arrived, people wore their armour to sleep and huddled in groups with wariness painted across their features. These days, people huddle according to proximity, or language, or interest. Clan names and allegiances don't seem to mean anything at all. Shaw chatters with a few tribeswomen who speak a similar dialect to Spanish, and they cluck their tongues like mothers when catching sight of his greasy palms after a long day. When Bellamy walks through the camp, he sees couples, sees friends, sees allies. It’s no utopia—there are still fights, there’s still unease and mistrust—but things have evolved. It’s not so easy to see in the newer arrivals, though it doesn’t take them very long before their shoulders begin to lose their tension, but when Bellamy looks at the first few batches of arrivals he can barely even tell that they were fighting tooth and claw to exterminate the other only months (and a century) ago.

There are little changes, too, apart from the general atmosphere of community—perhaps the biggest change is regarding Madi. When she’d descended with her entourage, he and Echo had been wary—though they didn’t address it Clarke’s words rung clearly in their heads. Madi, too, was on edge and her guards eyed every person with suspicion. Bellamy had expected animosity, towards her or by her request, but that’s not what happened. Instead people smile at her and roll their eyes when she marches through camp with her chin held too highly for a twelve year old. When people talk about her, they call her _Clarke’s girl,_ not _Heda._

Madi floundered under it, and they did with her.

(“How can I ask them to follow me when they see me as a child?” There was anger in her eyes, ice-cold, but there’d been confusion there too. Something in Madi that reminded her she _is_ a child, that she'd never wanted to be seen as something else.

“They will learn,” Echo promised her, and Madi seemed to wrestle with her pull to listen to a more experienced warrior and the pull to shrink away from the woman who’d hurt Clarke in front of her eyes. “You must make them respect you, and they will learn.”

Raven sent Echo a sharp look. “We’re not doing that _pain breeds respect_ shit down here. We don’t need to.”

Echo tilted her head. “Not if we can avoid it.” Madi watched the women before her with troubled eyes and when Bellamy placed a hand on her shoulder she went so stiff that he took it back.

She’s not quite as she was. She’s harder. More wary. She looks at them without any love in her eyes, without any of the awe and the hero worship that there had been, and try as he might Bellamy can’t decide if it’s because of how they hurt Clarke or because of the machine he placed in the back of her neck.)

 

The next morning, it only takes Bellamy a few hours to realise something has shifted. Clarke must have woken up early, earlier than him and the rest of his family, because everyone already knows she’s back.

He spots some members of the team she travelled with, telling stories by the fire with crowds amassing at their feet, laughing, jostling each other. He sees other things, too, little children with sketches clutched in their grubby hands, a couple teenagers sending him dirty looks when he tries to subtly step closer. The entire atmosphere of the camp has shifted, just a little bit, making it just a bit more awake, just a bit more alive. He remembers times like this before, times when Monty would brew a batch of moonshine and the 100 would be talking about it all day, or when a scouting party would come back with news of missing members of the Ark and everyone at Arkadia talked about it for hours. It's rejuvenation. 

Bellamy isn’t unfamiliar with the way camp life works, with the ebbing and flowing of conversation. When everyone lives so closely together, gossip spreads like wildfire. Public mood is dictated by what people hear, and it spreads—he finds himself drifting towards the firepits, where an Eligius man and a Wonkru girl are telling people about crystal lakes and purple clouds, about mountains that reach the sky and flowers that grow as tall as houses.

No, Bellamy isn’t unfamiliar with the way camp life works. What he is unfamiliar with is seeing Clarke emerge from the forest just after lunch, laughing with a group of mismatched people. Some of them are Wonkru. Some of them are Eligius. There are four braids in her hair, pulling it away from her face but leaving the rest of it hanging, and there’s a teenage girl who’s looking at Clarke like she hung the stars.

When she gets closer to the camp, Bellamy can hear the way people recognise her: shouts of _Clarke!_ from people waving her over by the firepits, from younger children and teenagers. Clarke, still smiling, makes her way over to one of the campfires, where a big, bearded man is sitting next to a little boy. Bellamy watches Clarke approach them, kneeling down to look the little boy in the face. She wobbles as she does, and the man reaches out steadying hands to her upper arms even before Bellamy noticed, as if he knew it would be coming. (That's not like her. Clarke's always had steady feet. How did the man know she'd need help staying up?) The boy hides behind his fingers, smiling shyly. Clarke is laughing with them, speaking about something in fluid, natural Trig, and there’s something so soft in her expression when she looks at the child that Bellamy has to walk away before a wave of guilt can overcome him.

Usually, he can forget that she spent six years raising a child.

Sometimes, he can't escape it.

And ever since they’ve been down here, it’s all he can hear. Madi isn’t commander, or Heda. She’s _Clarke’s kid, that Griffin girl._ Eligius soldiers look at her like she’s a child, and some of Wonkru give her fondly exasperated glances when she marches through camp, not a hint of feared reverence on features that once worshiped commanders like her. Madi _is_ a child. Bellamy doesn’t know why that’s been hitting him so hard, the past few days, and he hates that there’s a big part of him that thinks she can’t afford to be. Madi is a leader, now. Whether or not Clarke wanted it, Madi is Heda, and for this coexistence thing to work, she has to be respected and treated seriously. Or, at least, Bellamy thought she did. Now, he isn’t so sure.

* * *

A few nights after she returns, Clarke attends the first party she’s been to since her dropship days. There isn’t much food, because it’s still a work in progress finding things which are safe to eat, but there’s watered-down moonshine, and there’s music. A few Delphi caln members bring out drums, hide stretched tightly over wood and bone skeletons, and someone finds maracas.

Clarke sways, pulled roughly into the mess of dancing bodies by Sage and Roen, and she can almost forget that Madi has been avoiding her. (She still hasn’t seen her daughter. It’s been days, and she still hasn’t seen her daughter. If she wasn’t so heartbroken, she’d be furious.)

Above them, the night sky is illuminated with stars and swirling patterns of light. Sage spins Clarke around, Roen at her side, and the music is seeping into her bones, deep and earthy sounds that remind Clarke of easier, brighter days. (But it’s not so bad. These days are bright enough. Far brighter than she ever thought she’d deserve.)

Clarke can only keep up with Sage and Roen for a little while, barely ten minutes, before her vision goes a bit dark at the edges and she has to clutch Roen’s arm for stability so she doesn’t collapse on her wobbly knees. Earlier, with Kyro and his nephew, she'd nearly fallen over when she tried to crouch down. 

“Ah, crap,” Sage says. “Klark, I’m sorry, shouldn’t have spun you so fast.”

Clarke waves a dismissive hand, shaking her head despite her dizziness. “No, no,” she wheezes. “Keep dancing. I’ll just... I just need a minute.”

K’Rhea appears at Roen’s shoulder, her critical eyes assessing the situation. “You shouldn’t be dancing, _Klark,”_ she chastises, tone worried, and Clarke rolls her eyes.

“No, she’s right,” Roen rumbles, eyeing her in concern and guiding Clarke over to the outskirts of the dancing circle so she can lower herself onto a log.

Once she’s sitting, it’s easier to catch her breath. Her lungs feel weak and fluttery, and Clarke would hate that she’s reduced to this but she’s spent months getting used to the slow deterioration of her body, adjusting to the way she seems to be decomposing, growing familiar with the rot under her skin.

“Go, go,” Clarke urges them, sending Sage back into the crowd, pushing K’Rhea gently when the girl hesitates. “I’ll be fine. You know I’ll be fine.” Roen, the last to leave, looks at her with sad eyes. She isn’t quite sure what they all think, but she hasn't really been trying to hide from what’s happening so it’s only natural that some people notice it. (It: the end. It: the thing in her paper-thin lungs, in her shaking fingers, in her pounding head. The end to her story. It: something unnamed, unavoidable, and undisguisable).

Maybe once, Clarke would have tried harder to hide it, would have hated the pity in Roen’s eyes and the fraility in her knees. Once, Clarke would have called herself weak. 

But Clarke is so tired.

And it doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is the future, one she’ll never see, but one that she’d like to leave a quiet, kind imprint on if she can. What matters is Madi, who doesn’t want to see her, and Madi, who she’d still do anything for.

Clarke tilts her head up at the sky. She breathes. Her fingers itch for a paintbrush, for charcoal, but she knows she’d never be able to capture what she sees above her. Charcoal could never substitute for the inky, thick purple darkness of the night and the golden glow cast by the fires, berry paints could never translate colourful stars and glittering galaxies onto blank paper. At the end of it all, nothing Clarke does could ever compare for what’s already there.

She spent six years, six long, lonely, terrible years where every second was a struggle to survive. But she also spent six years learning to love the world around her, travelling through deserts and icelands and desolate places that she found herself loving quite accidentally. She spent years with Madi in a place so beautiful that she named it Eden, teaching her daughter the shapes of the stars and living like she’d never dreamed she could.

At the end of it all, Clarke thinks she could be happy with just her daughter safe and the stars shining above her. Nothing else matters, anymore. Just the future and the present. Just the beauty in existing. Just the love in her heart and the vastness of the universe.

She doesn’t feel it when her nose starts to bleed. She doesn’t notice herself start to slip into unconsciousness, and when she falls onto the ground, she barely makes a sound.

 

Clarke wakes to a pounding in her head, and lifts a hand to her forehead, hissing through her teeth.

Immediately, someone flies to her side, the rustling of their clothes as loud as wardrums to Clarke’s ears, their cool fingers prying her hands away and gripping them. Clarke cracks open an eye. “Mom,” she rasps, recognising the fingers holding hers and the scars that they bear. 

“Hi, baby,” Abby answers. She’s thin, too frail, and she’s hiding secrets that Clarke already knows.

“ _Mom_ ,” Clarke repeats, her eyes watering, her voice cracking, and at the sound of it, Abby’s face twists and she reaches out with frail arms to gather her daughter into a hug.

“Oh, what’s going on with you?” Abby whispers her question into Clarke’s hair, and Clarke just closes her eyes and squeezes her mother tighter. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have a mother, six years of radio silence following two years of warfare and a year of imprisonment and then followed by a period of frantic and shifting alliances. Clarke hasn’t held her mother during peacetime for a full decade. She hadn’t realised it was something that she’d missed.

When Abby pulls back, she looks into Clarke’s eyes and cups her face in her hands, asks Clarke questions she can’t answer and lies as often as she tells the truth. Every time Clarke asks how she’s doing, Abby smiles at her, and every time she asks anything else Abby looks away.

Clarke stops responding. There isn’t anything she can say.

Abby doesn’t want to let her leave the makeshift med bay, but Clarke just levels her with a quiet glance and Abby steps aside, her trembling fingers almost skeletal when they reach up to brush some of Clarke’s hair out of her eyes. “I love you,” Abby says, her voice scratched and wavering.

“I love you too,” Clarke whispers back, and it doesn’t feel like she’s the one saying the words. She walks out of medbay, and she can hear Abby start to cry behind her—she's still a doctor, even after everything, and maybe she can recognise the look in Clarke’s eyes, the look that says _it doesn’t matter because I know where this ends, I know what’s coming for me and there’s no use fighting what I know can't be fought._

It’s early morning when she steps outside. Not as early as Clarke likes to wake, so there are people wandering about and the sky is mostly light, but the clouds are still splashed with colour, and there’s a faint outline of the moon.

She lists a hand to shield her eyes from the unexpected brightness of the day, still dawn-kissed, and blinks a few times to help her eyes adjust. When she hears Madi’s voice in the distance, Clarke thinks she’s imagined it. But then it comes again, _“Clarke!”_ and Clarke lowers her hand, just in time to see Madi sprinting towards her, turning heads as she goes. Clarke lifts her arms just in time for Madi to come crashing into them, her daughter’s arms wrapped tightly around her, trapping her against the girl’s chest.

“Oof,” Clarke grunts, thoroughly winded, shocked into taking a few steps backwards with the force of Madi’s embrace. Her long hair tickles her nose when she leans down to press a kiss to Madi's head.

Clarke pulls back first, tentatively brushing a few strands of Madi’s hair behind one of her ears. “Hi,” Clarke says, her voice surprisingly croaky. Madi’s eyes, she’s horrified to see, are watery.

“Hi,” Madi says back, her voice even more choked than Clarke’s.

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?” Clarke bends down to look into Madi’s face, worried, her mind jumping to every possible conclusion: somebody is dead, somebody is hurt, Madi is hurt, somebody hurt Madi. Clarke has seen Madi in tears many times, over the years, and though she’s quick to recognise Madi’s position of power she still associates Madi’s tears with _I stubbed my toe_ and  _our rabbit died,_ the little things that she used to worry about before everything changed so completely. 

Madi’s lip wobbles, her eyes grow even more teary, and Clarke’s concern mounts. “Madi, hey, what happened?”

Madi sobs, the sound bursting out of her, and she buries her face in Clarke’s chest, flinging her arms around Clarke again. Clarke, caught by surprise, stumbles, then lets her hands rest on Madi’s back.

Madi’s still crying, but Clarke catches snippets of an explanation: _I didn’t know_ and _you just fell over_ and _you could have died_ and _I thought you were dead, I thought_ and  _I hadn’t even come to say hello because_ and _I'm so sorry, I was so scared, I love you, I miss you so much._

Clarke pulls Madi’s shoulders and then looks her daughter in the eyes, lifting Madi’s chin with one finger. “Hey. Look at me.” She waits for Madi to shudder herself into stillness, then smiles softly at her. “I’m fine. See? And I know you’re very busy, as Heda. It’s okay. I understand. I love you. I’ll always love you, and I know you love me... It’s very sweet to hear you say it, though, my  _natblida_.” Her tone is joking, by the end of her sentence, but Madi’s face crumbles.

“How can you _joke_ about this!” Her daughter’s voice is distressed, but Clarke can’t stop herself from smiling. This is her daughter, who used to get so upset when it rained because _what if the ants drowned, what about the worms and the bugs who live in the dirt?_ This is her daughter, who cried after Clarke told her about Jake Griffin. Relief feels like the tears in her eyes. 

“Honey,” Clarke says gently, “I’m okay. We’re both okay.”

Madi’s lip trembles. “But what if you weren’t?”

Clarke’s breath gets caught in her throat. What if she wasn’t? When she isn’t? Her smile falters, and she leans forward to press a bruising kiss to Madi’s skin. “I’d love you even then. I’ll always be with you, Madi, and I’ll always love you. Even when I’m gone, I’ll love you. We're family.”

Madi’s hands fist themselves in the back of Clarke’s sweater, and Clarke can feel it as she shudders, the last of her sobs dying in her chest, leaving her daughter tired and raw but calmed. When Clarke looks up, the eyes that she’d felt on them have all let them be. All but a few: the Wonkru members and Eligius crew who’d watched Clarke reunite with her daughter have looked away, fond or uninterested, but Bellamy is staring at them wide-eyed. Shaw is at his side, smiling, with suspiciously bright eyes. Raven, in between them both, has an unreadable expression and Clarke doesn’t know what she’s thinking. For one moment, Clarke looks at them, but then Madi quakes against her and she looks away, presses a kiss to Madi’s hair and tries to swallow her own urge to cry.

 

Murphy comes and finds her later that day, when she’s whittling arrows by a dying fire, the coals going grey before her eyes. She glances at him as he sits beside her, not quite on the opposite end of the log but not close enough to touch her, either. He doesn’t look at her, so she doesn’t say anything, and keeps carving away at the wood held in her fingers.

A time passes. The silence between them grows and stretches, and he remains so still that she almost forgets that he’s there. She doesn’t much mind, if he’s not going to pick a fight then he’s just like anyone else at the camp, and she’s long since grown out of her fear for them.

She’s moved onto her third arrow before he speaks. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Clarke looks up briefly from her arrow, brow furrowed.

“For the things I said,” he elaborates.

“You’ve said a lot of things,” Clarke points out, confused. “So have I. None of them warrant an apology, if you meant them.”

Murphy looks up, at that, and there’s something cloudy and unreadable in his eyes. “That doesn’t mean I should have said them, or that they were fair.”

“Where’s this coming from, Murphy?” Clarke sets her arrow down in her lap, frowning at him. “Are you alright? Is something wrong?”

Murphy jerks his head away from her, his expression pinched. “I’m _apologising_ , Clarke, nothing’s wrong.” His voice is sharp.

“Alright,” Clarke says slowly. “Thanks. But there’s no need to.”

“Let me do it anyway,” Murphy snaps, and Clarke shrugs.

She can feel him staring at her incredulously, but returns her attention to the arrow. After a pause, he huffs, and then she feels him shifting closer to her.

“What are you making?”

“Arrows,” Clarke says.

“I thought you were, ah. Not about that anymore."

Clarke lifts her head to stare at him. What the hell?

He flushes. “Weapons,” he elaborates.

Clarke continues to stare at him, and he fidgets uncomfortably under her scrutiny. “I’m not going to kill anyone,” she says finally, and she doesn’t mean for it to sound as angry as it does. “And besides, it’s not for me.” It’s for a boy from Wonkru, who’s grown up half underground and doesn’t even remember what the birds sounded like back home.

“Oh,” Murphy mutters. “That’s... not what I meant. Sorry.”

Clarke throws down the arrows and turns to face him properly. “What do you want, Murphy?”

He throws up his hands at her sudden movement. “Nothing!” Clarke glares. “Well, I—I just wanted to see how you were doing, I guess.”

Clarke brandishes her whittling knife at him. “I’m doing fine. Stop being weird.”

That, of all things, brings a smile to his face. “Thanks, Griffin, I can see that. I just meant, you know, with the party, and all.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Great, so you all know about that.”

He shrugs, unrepentant. “Abby doesn’t usually get to treat patients, anymore, but she kicked up a fuss when one of the Wonkru healers brought you in. I was worried.”

Clarke presses her lips together, the reminder of Abby not a pleasant one. “Just didn’t eat enough that day, that’s all.” Then she shoots him a look, quirking her lips into a half-smile. “Worried, Murphy? That doesn’t sound like you.”

He huffs. “Yeah, well, see if I do it again.” A comfortable silence falls between them, not tense like before. When he speaks next, his voice is surprisingly soft and tentative. “I don’t really know what’s going on with you, Clarke, but I can see you’re not... totally okay. Physically. And if you don’t want to talk about it, then... well, I’d be a shit person to talk about it with anyway, so that's fine.” Clarke snorts at that, and his lips twitch. “But I can see _something’s_ wrong, and I just. Thought you should, well, know. You’re not... alone.” He says the words uncomfortably, but they’re sincere.

Clarke doesn’t really know how to respond. Murphy’s lips purse. He just waits for her to respond, and Clarke opens her mouth but she can’t find any words to respond with. When the silence lengthens, but he still hasn’t left, she finally finds her voice. “It’s...” _fine, nothing’s wrong,_ she almost says. But if he already knows, and if... “Yeah.” She clears her throat. “I... thanks, Murphy.”

He smiles at her, a little, gentle thing, and she tries to smile back. When she doesn’t say anything else, he pushes off the log and stands. But before he leaves, he leans down and looks into her eyes. “You don’t have to do all this by yourself, Griffin. Remember that.” He taps the knife in her hands, straightens, and then walks away.

It takes Clarke a few minutes to remember what she was doing. How... unexpected.

 

Miller finds her, the next day. She’s puking, again.

“Kinda weird that this keeps happening,” he says dryly. Clarke doesn’t look up from the ground, just flips him off. She doesn’t expect for him to come closer, his boots crunching on the leaf litter on the ground, and then she goes stiff when his hands sweep her hair out of her way.

She almost throws him off, says something biting, but a sudden wave of nausea sends her gagging into the bush instead. When she straightens up, after taking a few moments to close her eyes and compose herself, Miller’s still standing there, slowly drawing his hands back. 

She glares at him, defensive and uncomfortable, but he just claps her on the shoulder. “You should see a doctor,” he says, and cuts off her next words before she can say them: “One who isn’t you, or your mom.” Clarke falters.

Miller draws back. “It sucks to see you like this,” he says.

Clarke glares, angry again. “It sucks to _be_ like this,” she answers fiercely. Maybe it’s unfair. He’s certainly being kinder than he has any reason to be.

“Yeah,” Miller agrees, not rising to the bait. “That’s why you should see a doctor.”

Clarke glowers.

“Seriously, though.”

She folds her arms in front of her chest and looks away from him. “It’s not going to go away, Miller,” she mutters. He’s quiet for a moment.

“Do you know what—”

“No.” She’d thought maybe it was nightblood, but Madi’s fine. Clarke’s been checking up on her religiously, and Madi knows better than to lie about something like this. Maybe it’s a delayed reaction from Praimfaya. Maybe it’s something genetic, or chronic, something dormant that was simply waiting for a chance to emerge. Clarke doesn’t know. And, in the end, it doesn’t matter anyway. There is only what there is.

Miller’s frowning, when Clarke turns to look at him. When she heads back to camp, he comes with.

 

Zeke stumbles into her that night, and pesters her with questions, his hands hovering like he wants to run them over her arms. “Did Miller send you? Murphy?” She asks, exasperated, and Zeke blinks, confused.

“What? No. I just noticed you’ve been looking, well, worse, and then what with the party the other day—”

“Zeke.” Clarke sighs. “I’m sick, okay? It’s not contagious, and I’m fine, but I’m sick.”

Zeke frowns. “How can you be fine _and_ sick?”

Clarke shrugs. “I’m fine right now. I’m just also sick. I’ve been sick long enough that I’m fine with it.”

Zeke’s frown gets bigger. “Have you been drinking enough?”

Clarke smiles at him. “ _Yes_ ,” she says empathically, then her smile shrinks as she remembers the situation. “Drinking water won’t help me at this point, Zeke. I don’t think anything really will.” He looks so distressed that Clarke reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay, though. I’m sure I’ll get better by myself.” No, she won’t. She’s lying to him. By the look on his face, he knows it. (But she won't give him the truth if it's only going to hurt him. She's made her peace with the truth, and she can't help him find his.)

 

It takes a week before Clarke is confronted by Raven, who finds her drinking tea with a group of Wonkru members and then stands there glaring until they all disappear.

“What the hell’s up with you?” The words burst out of her a few minutes after the rest of the group has left, and Clarke looks at her, surprised. She can't help the exasperation that she feels. So like Raven, to stand there in her blazing fury, righteous anger and the sun painting a halo behind her head. 

“Excuse me?”

“Sitting there,” Raven waves a hand, “acting like we’re strangers.”

Clarke’s look turns somewhat amused. “Aren’t we?”

Raven scowls. “Why did I have to find out that you’re sick from Zeke?”

Clarke stares, and feels frustration bubbling up to the surface. “It’s not as if I look especially healthy, Raven. You could have just looked. You could have asked me, or spoken to me at all.”

Raven bristles, even though Clarke can see she’s been thrown off by Clarke’s sudden candor. “If you’re sick, you should see Abby.”

Clarke rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her tea, wrapping her fingers around the tin cup to try and leech up its warmth. “We both know my mom shouldn’t be treating anyone right now.”

“Then see someone else.” Raven sounds frustrated, and Clarke looks up at her in confusion.

“Why do you even _care_?” She doesn’t say _and since when_ , or _and why now,_ but it’s a near thing.

“You could be contagious.” Raven crosses her arms in front of her chest. Clarke levels her with an unimpressed look.

“I’m not,” she says flatly.

“Zeke made it... he made it sound really bad. He made it sound like you might be, I don’t know, dying or something.” Raven sounds so uncomfortable that Clarke takes pity on her, sighing into her tea and plastering on a small smile of reassurance.

“He’s just exaggerating. Your boyfriend is a mother hen.”

Raven’s eyes narrow. “Don’t lie to me, Clarke.”

“Then don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to,” Clarke spits back, before she can think it through.

Raven’s expression flickers, and she takes an instinctive step back. Internally, Clarke winces.

“Wait, you’re really that sick?”

Clarke thinks, _probably worse, but what does it matter?_ Clarke says, “I don’t know, Raven. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“The fuck? You just said you might die, or course that’s something to worry about.”

At that, Clarke really does roll her eyes. “Is it?”

She's just being spiteful, and stupid, and she doesn't mean it, and Raven knows it because she bites back: “Yes it fucking is, you have a kid.”

Clarke sighs. “Madi is Heda,” she says, for what feels like the hundredth time, “and I’m just... oh, ignore me, Raven. I’m just tired. I’m sure this’ll pass.”

“I told you not to lie to me,” Raven replies, but she sounds just as tired as Clarke does, and she sits down on the log opposite Clarke. “And nobody here calls Madi _Heda_ anymore, if that escaped your notice.” She looks down at her hands, folded on top of her bent knees. “Echo thought maybe that was something you started, to undermine her power or some shit. But Bellamy didn’t think so, and neither do I.” At that, she looks up and meets Clarke’s eyes. “Are you really that sick?”

Clarke sighs. Haven’t they been over this? Raven doesn’t want the truth, anyway. She doesn’t care that much, and Clarke doesn’t want to talk about this, doesn’t want to talk to Raven, doesn’t want to talk to someone she used to love so deeply but who can now not even bear to look at her. Clarke licks her cracked lips and looks up at the sky. It’s orange, today, approaching dusk. Orange clouds, red clouds. _Shrouds,_ thinks Clarke. _Rhymes with clouds._ Then she immediately throws the thought away, disgusted with her own morbidity. _Stop the self-pity,_ she tells herself sternly.

“Raven,” she says eventually. “I know you’re angry with me.” She licks her lips again, and turns her gaze to the camp around them, filled with people from different lives who are all just trying to start anew. “And you—you have a right to be. But I don’t—I’m so tired. I’m so _tired_. Can we not—can we just—” She cuts herself off, frustrated.

“We don’t have to fight,” Raven says quietly. She lowers her chin onto her arms, folded over her knees. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to fight. I came here because I guess I was worried.” She shrugs. “I feel like I’ve known you for so long, even though I haven’t. You’ve just been a part of my life for so long. And I guess, for a second, I forgot that if something was wrong, you probably wouldn’t tell me. Not that I've given you any encouragement to do so.”

“I would,” Clarke defends. “If—”

“If something was wrong with the camp, yeah,” Raven agrees, interrupting. “Or Madi, or if someone was in danger, or whatever. Just not you. Just not if something was wrong with _you_.”

Clarke shrugs, looking around as the light goes golden and dusk approaches, a group of teenagers jostling each other and grinning, Kyro swinging his nephew around and beaming at him, Sage and Gabe slipping behind a tent, hand in hand. “I’m sorry, Raven. For the rest of it, too.” It’s maybe the most half-assed apology Clarke has ever given, but she means it whole-heartedly.

 “Yeah, I know.” Raven sighs, and for a second, she sounds old and jaded, nothing like how she usually is. “I know, and I just—” Then she stops herself. She exhales, and it sounds shakier than usual. “I’m sorry too, Clarke.”

 

On the day that Clarke feels the worst she’s ever felt, she goes and finds Bellamy. “Walk with me?”

He looks at her, then at Echo, who shrugs. He's in the middle of writing down reports, logbooks of their progress and discoveries. “Is something wrong?” His voice is gruff, and Clarke shrugs. Either he’ll come, or he won’t. 

“No,” she says. “I just want to go on a walk.” Bellamy looks at her for a long moment, Echo watching them neutrally, and she can see the refusal forming on his lips.

But then, softly, he says, “Okay. Let me just grab my jacket.”

They head out of the camp, past the groups of community and friends, past Benji who waves at them, past Mandy teaching Atiyo how to flick an army knife, past two girls braiding flowers into their hair. 

“You’re really not supposed to be out here,” Bellamy says when they slip into the woods, but it doesn’t really sound like a complaint, and also Clarke doesn’t care.

“I’ve been going out by myself for months,” Clarke replies. “If you wanted me to stop, you would have said something.”

The rest of their journey is silent. Bellamy is smiling at the ground when she risks a glance at him. 

When they reach the cliff, Bellamy sucks in a breath. He’s taking in the view for the first time, but Clarke’s seen it before and she allows herself to sit down, swinging her legs over the edge of its marbled surface before leaning back and sweeping her eyes across the horizon. This planet, it’s so beautiful. It may not be Clarke’s home, because that will always be Eden, but it is so breathtakingly gorgeous that she loves it. It is so beautiful that she loves it even as it is killing her. It is, Clarke thinks, sublime: it is terrible, and it is lovely, and she is in awe of it. It is lovely because it is terrible, and terrible because it is lovely. When she looks at it, this planet of marble cliffs, purple clouds, blue mountains and looming forests, she wants to explore every inch of its surface and she wants to hide in a cave and never emerge. She wants to draw every leaf of every tree, and she wants to run back to space. It is the uncontrollable release from restraint. Sublime. Untamed. 

Bellamy lowers himself down beside her. “How long have you been coming here?”

Clarke glances at him, smiling. “A long time,” she answers, and he smiles absently, then glances sidelong at her and is surprised to find her gaze already fixed upon him.

“Hey, are you okay?” Bellamy leans forward. “I’ve noticed that the others have been... different towards you, suddenly, and I wondered if something happened.” His brow is furrowed in confusion.

Clarke looks at him, at the way that the light illuminates his eyelashes and his freckles, his curls and the brown of his eyes, and says: “I’m sick, Bellamy, and I don’t think I’m going to get better.”

He stares at her. Then he laughs. “Wh-what?” His voice is high, confused and alarmed. She feels a bit bad that she’s ambushed him. But it’s nothing he didn’t already know, and she can see that as he sweeps his eyes over her, at her gauntness, the tinge of her skin, the way her fingers shake. She watches him as he adds it all up in his head, the fainting, the nosebleeds, the vomiting. The dizzy spells, the exhaustion, the stumbling over her own feet. 

He looks to her eyes, then, after all this, and whatever he finds there—calm acceptance, maybe, or simple resignation—takes the breath from his lungs. He curls in on himself, hunched over, and raises a hand to his face, running over his eyes, pressing down, and then covering his mouth. “How— how long?”

“How long have I been sick, or how long do I have left?”

Bellamy flinches at that. “ _Fuck,_ Clarke.”

He hisses through his teeth. “I meant how long have you been sick.”

“Sorry.” She isn’t, really, but he looks wrecked. “Since we landed, pretty much.” Bellamy’s hands grip his hair, pulling his head forward, and Clarke is reaching out before she can think about it, tugging his hands away.

When she goes to pull her hands away, he doesn’t let her, staring at their joined fingers. “Why didn’t you say something? Anything? We could have sent you back up, or we could have looked for a cure, or...” He trails off. None of those things would have worked, but she doesn’t hold it against him.

“At first, I just... I didn’t really want to. I didn’t see much of a point. I didn’t see much of a point in anything, really, back then.” She keeps her tone steady, and her words are honest, and Bellamy flinches and jerks his head to look at her. He knows what she’s really saying.

The truth of it is this: Clarke had known from the start that what she was feeling wouldn’t pass. But at the start, Clarke hadn’t cared.

“But then,” she continues, after a moment has passed. “I just... I knew what was coming, so I didn’t see the point in worrying anyone before worry was needed. And I got by fine, too, I could still work, and go on hikes,” Bellamy flinches at those words, knowing he sent her on those trips, he assigned her those jobs, and she squeezes his hand in comfort. “And I was doing good here, Bellamy. I made maps, and drew sketches for people who wanted to see parts of the new world they hadn’t yet. I taught people who had forgotten how to track, I taught people who didn’t know how to braid, I helped people.”

She looks down at their fingers, his browner and more calloused than hers, but hers more scarred than his. “I _helped_ people, Bellamy. Just in little ways, but I helped. I spent so long, being... being in charge, being a leader, and I was helping people then, too, but it wasn’t the same.” She wasn’t killing anyone by helping build community. She wasn’t hurting anyone by teaching Trig and French, by guiding groups through the forests, by carving bears from wood and telling stories.

“I didn’t want the good things I was doing to be tainted by the bad thing.”

She looks over at Bellamy, and there are tears on his cheeks but his eyes are so soft, looking at her like he’s remembering how close they used to be, before everything became terrible and went so horribly wrong. She thinks maybe what he's looking at her with is love.  

“They wouldn’t have been,” Bellamy says. His voice is rough. “You wouldn’t have been alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Clarke answers. “Those people back there, Bellamy, they’re good people. I’d forgotten that, back in Eden. I'd forgotten that people can be good. That my family is only one family, and there are others.” She will always love Madi, and the months spent without her were some of the hardest months of her life, and the loneliest and cruellest. But they were also a reminder that Clarke thinks she needed. They forced her to live life on her own, untethered to anyone at all. She hadn’t had friends, and she hadn’t had family, and she’d managed to do some good all on her own.

“You’re my family too,” she says, and turns to watch the sun as it begins to sink, casting yellow light over the treetops and shimmery, holographic reflections on the far-away lakes. “I’m sorry, so sorry, for everything that happened, that I did.”

Bellamy sniffs roughly. “It’s okay.” She levels him with a stern look, and he winces. “Well, it’s not, but neither was any of the stuff I did—getting Madi to take the flame, not calling you part of my family—that shit’s on me, too. I’m sorry too, Clarke. You’ve always been part of my family. I’m sorry that it took me so long to say.”

Clarke shrugs with one shoulder, smiling lop-sidedly at him. “I’ll always forgive you,” she answers, and the words come out like the truth because that’s what they are. There is so little about Clarke which is gentle and kind, but she will always forgive Bellamy Blake because that is what keeps those little parts of her remaining gentle and kind. She will always forgive him, because he's Bellamy.

“And I will always forgive you,” Bellamy replies, and when he reaches out to pull her into his side, his arm over her shoulders, it feels as natural as breathing.

She knows this is not the end, not truly. There will be hard times, to come. There will be tears, and terrible things she will have to tell people that she loves and doesn’t want to leave. Perhaps, though Clarke doesn’t waste her time on false hopes, there will be an ending to her story that does not end with her body giving up on her.

But for now, with Bellamy pressing a kiss to her hair and her arm winding around his waist, the sun casting a golden glow on the planet in front of them, Clarke is happy. If this is how her story were to end, she would be happy. It is soft, and it is gentle, and there is beauty and kindness in the world. She has a family. She has a future.

“I hope you know we’re going to fight this,” Bellamy murmurs.

“Of course,” Clarke answers, smiling at him, because of course they’ll fight this, she didn’t ever expect any differently. Maybe they’ll lose, but that’s not what matters, not really. What matters is that they’ll fight, and they’ll fight together, and the knowledge of that truth has gotten Clarke through so many years on the ground. She leans her head on his shoulder, watching the sun sink lower and lower into the hills, casting a soft haze over the valleys and the mountains that glitter with dusk light and reflect the emerging stars. 

Maybe they'll lose, but first, they'll fight, just like they always have. Maybe they'll lose, but first, they'll live.

Her father, Clarke thinks, would be proud.

**Author's Note:**

> pls review friends ily <3


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